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During the process of EU enlargement to the East, the "Roma problem" has increasingly gained a central position in the EU citizenship discourse. Despite the centrality of the Roma issues, however, the Roma themselves are still understood and conceptualised as outsiders. Their reality of being and becoming EU citizens has remained marginal to definitions of what the EU citizenship is or should be. This thesis explores the potential of the EU citizenship in improving the lives of marginal citizens such as the Roma. Firstly, through a phenomenological and existentialist approach, it investigates the EU citizenship as a Roma reality. Secondly, from an Aristotelian perspective, it considers how the Roma envision, pursue, and practice their ideas of the good life as marginal EU citizens. Drawing from the analysis of eighteen semi-structured interviews (conducted among Romanian Roma migrants living in a big city in Northern England) and supplementary ethnographic data, this thesis indicates that the reality of the EU citizenship, for the participants of this study, is a complex and conflictual process of becoming, which is poorly addressed by current conceptual and political structures. By proposing the notion of the "flourishing EU citizen" this thesis attempts to fill this gap, at least conceptually. Additionally, it makes an empirical contribution to debates on the EU citizenship and Roma migration by providing a holistic view of the experiences of the Roma in this context. Finally, it indicates two priorities. Firstly, it proposes further research exploring the spaces and places in which conflictual ideas of the good life are recognised and resolved. Secondly, it suggests that the EU citizenship needs to be understood as responsibility and in terms of shared vulnerability in order to accommodate the diversity and complexity of these ideas.

Existing academic treatments of advice literature have used it either as a true record of historical practice, or as untrustworthy and requiring corroboration with other sources. Neither method extracts its maximum historical value. The hypothesis tested here is that analysis of domestic advice literature using techniques of literary and visual close reading is revealing of the mediation of modernist design sensitive to the interplay of social and material factors in the home. A research problem addressed in this study is, therefore, to model a method for using domestic advice literature in the pursuit of design historical understanding. This study draws on a sample of three hundred domestic advice texts to examine domestic design in the postwar period (1945-1970), and particularly, advice given about modernist design as a response to social change. Part One presents the methodological position, situated in chapter one as part of a reassessment of the significance of the everyday, of the domestic, and of mediation. A genealogy of the interrelated development of etiquette, homemaking and home decoration books supports the decision to use these sources collectively as a hitherto uncharted genre of domestic ideals revealing of the social and material aspects of domesticity. With reference to post-structuralist historiography and literary analysis, a case is made for the value of looking at domestic advice, rather than through it, using close textual and visual analysis. Chapter three demonstrates the value of applying techniques of literary analysis to this genre for revealing underlying ideological values. Part Two establishes the value of the method in three case studies of advice directed at novel social characters to have emerged during the first half of the twentieth century: the newly enlarged middle class, the newly unassisted hostess and the teenager consumer. Domestic advisors offered solutions based to a greater or lesser degree on modernist design values, including utility, economy, flexibility and modularity, proposing that these novel material forms would better accommodate postwar social practices. However, close reading reveals ambiguity and faultlines; the advice is shown to serve existing dominant groups, privileged by class, gender and age. The project of domestic advice literature is compromised by the authority necessary to the role of the advisor, which produces inherently ideological hegemonic discourses, while the project of modernism is shown not to live up to the claims made for it by domestic advisors. This thesis contributes to knowledge an original demonstration of the value of close textual and visual analysis of domestic advice literature for design historical understanding of how social change and its material solutions have been managed in mediating discourse.

Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) was one of America's most prominent industrial designers working between 1927 and 1950. My study investigates his designs and rhetoric as rational and non-rational expressions of modernity. The aspects of modernity explored include: modernism, mass culture, consumption, production, identity and gender. The study investigates Bel Geddes's designs of stage sets, architecture, products, and world fair exhibits, and the rhetoric he used to promote such designs. Through such projects and their emphases on art, desire, intuition, spirituality, order, and science, Bel Geddes fashioned his image as a 'practical visionary'. Chapter one, 'Both Artist-Engineer and Practical Visionary: The Imaging of Industrial Design in Horizons (1932)', investigates how Bel Geddes sought to present the field of industrial design as one of logic and foresight, by promoting himself, and by proxy all industrial designers, as rational and imaginative artist-engineers. This dual discourse was offered in Bel Geddes's monograph Horizons -the central focus of this chapter. Chapter two, 'Shaping the Audiences of Dramatic Design', explores Bel Geddes's move from advertising and stage design in the 1910s and 1920s to architectural design, investigating in particular his designs (1928-1932) of theatres, window displays, an advertising agency auditorium, and a restaurant for the Chicago World's Fair of 1933. In the creation of these designs Bel Geddes was informed by his knowledge of drama, psychology and audience behaviour. Such architectural designs were meant to impress, excite and transform their audiences -to encourage emotional, psychological or ideological change. Chapter three, 'Industrial Architecture: The Factory, Petrol Station Design and the Mass Produced Home', explores the rhetoric and designs which expressed Bel Geddes's belief in the material benefits of industrial production and the symbolic value of the machine. The chapter looks at Bel Geddes's designs (1929-1945) of a factory development, a petrol station, and a mass production house. These designs were intended to promote Bel Geddes and his clients as progressive, modern and far-sighted, and presented the machine as both rational and non-rational, with the ability to both order society and provide it with a spiritual basis. Chapter four, 'Streamlining: Both a Mechanical and Organic Aesthetic', investigates Bel Geddes's streamlined designs (1928 -1950) of vehicles and other products and their accompanying rhetoric. The chapter explores Bel Geddes's flexible streamlined aesthetic, which alternately foregrounded mechanical and natural aspects, depending on the era and the requirements of the design. Chapter five, 'Consumer Research: Constructing the Ideal Consumer and a Popular and Modern Aesthetic, 1930-1945', investigates NBG & Company's consumer surveys and resulting design recommendations which sought to promote a modern, popular and technologically progressive style aimed at purchasers with average tastes and middle incomes. Chapter six, 'Futurama and the War Models Exhibit: The Production and Consumption of Model Worlds and Bel Geddes's Masculine Image', explores the creation and reception of three of Bel Geddes's miniature modelling projects, his futuristic model cities created for a Shell Oil advertising campaign (1937) and for the General Motors Futurama shown at the New York World's Fair (1939-40), and the models depicting World War II battles built and photographed for Life magazine (1942), and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (1944). Such projects helped to create a masculine and prophetic image for Bel Geddes.

Contemporary instances of racially charged product imagery are deeply intertwined with history. Products like "Aunt Jemima", "Uncle Ben's Rice", or the indigenous peoples portrayed on "Land O' Lakes" butter affects perception of race, class, and gender. The continued existence of these controversially branded products helps to construct attitudes about these subjects and demonstrates a societal acceptance of these as norms. The British Empire Marketing Board (EMB) represents an important historical example of the production of such racialized values. Between 1926 and 1933, the EMB created and disseminated marketing materials to promote intra-Empire trade. While the EMB was generally considered to have been a marketing failure, it was impactful in its presentation of an idealized vision of the British Empire and its colonial constituents. Namely, the EMB combined a complex medley of social ideas to present an elite white British male and his "nuclear family" as the Empire's ideal subjects. To contextualize and provide conversation about these issues, this thesis examines the EMB's "Buy Empire" posters. The EMB's posters demonstrate that while their images portray efforts to encourage economic and cultural ties within the British Empire, the posters also cultivated attitudes towards class, gender, and particularly race. The appearance of these themes in government-produced propaganda highlights the attempt by the EMB to cement racially charged ideas into the fabric of British society and culture.

This study examined the impact of two treatments, augmented reality or concrete materials, on the Geometry knowledge of high school students. Participating classes were chosen from two secondary schools between two rural Virginia school districts. The sampling method selected for the study employed a convenience sample. There were 87 total participants in the study. The importance of this study emerged from a lack of research relating the use of augmented reality in the classroom to its effect on student learning. The purpose of this quantitative pretest-posttest, non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental study was to evaluate the difference in achievement scores, as measured by scores on the Three-Dimensional Figures Reporting Category of the Virginia Standards of Learning test, based on type of instructional delivery. Data analysis was completed using Quade’s Rank Analysis of Covariance to control for pretest scores. The study also evaluated the perceived learning for high school Geometry students, as measured by the CAP Perceived Learning Scale (Rovai, Wighting, Baker, & Grooms, 2009), based on the type of instruction. Data analysis on CAP Perceived Learning scores was completed using the Mann-Whitney U test.

The British Victorian architect and designer Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) was responsible for a wide variety of buildings and designs in the Gothic Revival style. In his publications, Pugin championed the architecture of the Middle Ages as representing an ideal mixture of style and faith and has subsequently been portrayed as advocating the return to a Medieval way of life. Conflated with that other champion of the Gothic Revival John Ruskin, scholars have applied Ruskin's dislike of machine-made products to Pugin when in fact he was never concerned with the way in which his goods were produced. To accomplish such a vast amount of work in his short lifetime, Pugin relied on a group of skilled and trusted collaborators - John Hardman for metalwork and stained glass, John Gregory Crace for wallpaper and furniture, Herbert Minton for encaustic tiles, and George Myers for building construction - who utilised a range of mechanised processes to realise his designs. By examining Pugin's working process, this thesis has sought to show that rather than rejecting mechanisation, Pugin took advantage of new materials and methods as a means to conveniently and expeditiously create the range of high-quality works for which he is known today.

Despite the fact that over the past two decades the total death rate has declined up to twenty percent, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States and accounts for nearly one in every four deaths. It is therefore of paramount importance that new strategies continue to develop in an effort to curb both incidence and treatment of disease. The current research landscape is focused on developing strategies to disrupt molecular signatures of cancer cell types, commonly known as targeted therapy. Of particular importance in the advancement of targeted therapies are matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), a family of endopeptidases whose primary function lies in cleaving extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins and are frequently dysregulated in cancer. While research regarding MMPs is decades old, their significance in the signal transduction of several oncogenic pathways is yet to be fully explored. In addition, a dearth of quantitative data exists describing the action of MMPs in three dimensional (3D) networks, a configuration that causes cells to express vastly different behaviors compared to traditional two-dimensional (2D) in vitro culture methods. This dissertation aims to further elucidate the intimate relationships between MMPs, the ECM, cancer pathway signaling, and cell migration. First, the behavioral crosstalk between MMPs and the ECM is studied using quantitative methods in 3D matrices. Next, the role of MMPs in both Ras oncogenic and HER2 positive breast cancer is probed via extensive protein expression analysis. Finally, the behavioral aspects of MMPs in 3D are assessed marrying both in vitro data with a computational model to predict migration response. The results reveal that MMPs exhibit a bidirectional relationship with respect to matrix architecture, and the ability to regulate and be regulated by the ECM. In addition, it is concluded that MMPs play a significant role in both active Ras and HER2 upregulated cancer signaling. Finally, the data demonstrates the robustness and accuracy of our methods in manufacturing a model to predict migration in 3D matrices. The work described here promises to further enhance the knowledge of MMPs in cancer and potentially inform future drug development endeavors.

Mixtures of polypropylene, azodicarbonamide, and precipitated silica were investigated and compared for their thermal and optical properties and their densities. Dispersion of filler and its influence on the crystallinity and bubble shape and size was studied using DSC and optical microscopy. Since two competing effects are occurring, mainly nucleation and growth of polymer crystals in the presence of a nucleating agent as well as nucleation and growth of bubbles, two competing mechanisms are suggested to influence the overall crystallinity, number, size, and shape of bubbles as well as the density of the mixtures. As expected, an increase in filler concentration increases the viscosities when added into the polymer matrix, which should in turn, influence the amount of bubbles observed and the densities. Interestingly enough, optical microscopy reveals that loading of filler and blowing agent and mixing temperatures influences the number, shape and size of bubbles observed in addition to the resulting densities of the mixtures. Density measurements also revealed that at 10 weight percent filler concentration, densities were greatly affected based on the mixing temperature and whether or not subsequent compression was done.

Astronomical instruments dedicated to the study of Cosmic Microwave Background polarization are in need of optics with very low systematic effects such as beam shape and cross-polarization in an optical configuration. With the demand for millimetre wave larger focal planes comprising thousands of pixels, these systematic effects have to be minimal across the whole focal surface. In order to reach the instrument requirements such as resolution, cross-polarization and beam ellipticity, new optical configurations with well-understood components have to be studied. Refractive configurations are of great importance amongst the potential candidates. The aim is to bring the required technology to the same level of maturity that has been achieved with well-understood existing ones. This thesis is focused on the study of such optical components for the W-band spectral domain. Using optical modelling with various software packages, combined with the manufacture and accurate experimental characterization of some prototype components, a better understanding of their performance has been reached. To do so, several test set-ups have been developed. Thanks to these new results, full Radio-Frequency refractive systems can be more reliably conceived.