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The sea is a restless realm, In part that restlessness is timeless: the action of wind and waves. In part it is ancient: the direct threat of pirates. In part it is very modern: the threat of terrorism that has been felt acutely since the events of 11th September 2001. he reaction to these events has had a profound and continuing impact in the maritime domain. In particular it has been suggested that pirates and maritime terrorists present a largely common threat to international maritime security. This thesis examines this hypothesis by reviewing each phenomenon separately before asking how and under what circumstances pirates and maritime terrorists might come together.

Developing technology to help people teach and learn is an important topic in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). In this thesis we present three studies on this topic. In the first study, we demonstrate new games for learning mathematics and discuss the evidence for key design decisions from user studies. In the second study, we develop a real-time video compositing system for distance education and share evidence for its potential value compared to standard techniques from two user studies. In the third study, we demonstrate our markerless hand tracking interface for real-time 3D manipulation and explain its advantages compared to other state-of-the-art methods. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This study examined the predictive relationship between adult literacy students' reading assessments in four component sub-skills (phonological decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and spelling) and their gains in reading comprehension from pretest to posttest. Additionally, the adult literacy instructors' content knowledge in reading instruction and their ability to apply this knowledge was analyzed to determine if there was a relationship between these factors and student reading comprehension gains. Lastly, students' age was analyzed to determine if this factor predicted reading comprehension gain and whether it interacted with any of the other predictor variables. Assessments were given to 139 adult literacy students and their ten instructors. Results showed that students' skills in phonological decoding and vocabulary were significant predictors of gains in reading comprehension. Teacher knowledge about fluency instruction, vocabulary instruction, and reading comprehension instruction were also significant predictors of gains in reading comprehension. These results show that these student and teacher variables predicted the extent of improvement in reading comprehension for the adult literacy students. These two sets of findings when combined reveal that all of the reading components play an important role in reading comprehension. As such, the present study's findings suggest that professional development for teachers, and reading instruction for intermediate level adult students, should address all four reading components. The instructional focus should be influenced by results of careful student assessment in the components of reading. In the current atmosphere of heightened teacher and student accountability, as well as increased academic rigor required by the Common Core Learning Standards, adult education teachers will need to be as well trained and prepared as K-12 teachers. Lastly, age was found to be related to gains in reading comprehension and showed a curvilinear, U-shaped function. Students in the mid range in age (i.e., 40 to 53 years) improved less in reading comprehension than both younger and older students. In addition, age was related to performance on the fluency measure such that older students showed a decline in their speed to identify separate words in rows of letters than younger students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This thesis examines the operating principles of comedy narratives across literary and screen forms and describes how we can feel a positive affective response, or comic affect, towards characters we identify with in darker comedy narratives that end in failure. This is not as negatively affective as it may sound. Our bodies fall apart, people are annoying and the world doesn’t care if we fail, but our suffering is all fuel for comedy. Comedy narratives, as a general audience expectation, often end in success but failure is a fundamental narrative driver. The failure of the comic character, for various reasons examined in this research, will pilot this thesis on comic affect and its operation in the comedy narrative. Psychologist Silvan S. Tomkins writes of human suffering that “the distance between aspiration and achievement is a perennial source of distress” (313). And this distance is failure, the gap between aspiration and explosion, a permanent condition of the comedy mode. Comic affect takes our distress and places it at some distance from ourselves, giving us room to laugh, a positive affect. I have selected comedy narratives for analysis across a range of media and format as exemplars that value failure as an essential truth about human existence. I also contend that comic affect in both literary and screen comedy narratives is achieved by creating comic distance between the reader or viewer and the narrative. Furthermore the characters of literary and screen comedy narratives are defamiliarised by their comic subjectivity and limitations through the operating principles of exaggeration, comedic incongruity, and the abstraction of violence.