Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Dynamic Content'

Caching in Content Delivery Network is one of the leading methods for saving and providing Quality of Services to users in terms of low latency experienced when requesting multimedia resources. Caching allows a parsimonious use of bandwidth for service providers to have a scalable system and avoid network congestions. Most of the research has focused to save contents in CDN in order to meet the restriction of memory and bandwidth consumption relying on optimal content placement problem and cache policy. The most common policy used to cache content is based on the content's popularity, i.e., the request frequency. The availability of predictions in the requests of content would allow to optimally cache content. However, how to analyze past content requests to have consistent prediction of future data requests is an open and challenging problem. In this master thesis, this has been addressed by considering data mining, which is a multidisciplinary technique involving theoretical and practical data analysis. Dynamic predictors are designed and proposed to retrieve inherent content information for improving the prediction of the content item selection. Numerical results show that the proposed method achieves good results in term of hit ratio, i.e., low prediction error, which might be used by CDN designer and might be a potential input for the optimal content placement problem.

This thesis addresses the research questions of High Dynamic Range (HDR) visual contents compression. The HDR representations are intended to represent the actual physical value of the light rather than exposed value. The current HDR compression schemes are the extension of legacy Low Dynamic Range (LDR) compressions, by using Tone-Mapping Operators (TMO) to reduce the dynamic range of the HDR contents. However, introducing TMO increases the overall computational complexity, and it causes the temporal artifacts. Furthermore, these compression schemes fail to compress non-salient region differently than the salient region, when Human Visual System (HVS) perceives them differently. The main contribution of this thesis is to propose a novel Mapping-free visual saliency-guided HDR content compression scheme. Firstly, the relationship of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) lifting steps and TMO are explored. A novel approach to compress HDR image by Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) 2000 codec while backward compatible to LDR is proposed. This approach exploits the reversibility of tone mapping and scalability of DWT. Secondly, the importance of the TMO in the HDR compression is evaluated in this thesis. A mapping-free post HDR image compression based on JPEG and JPEG2000 standard codecs for current HDR image formats is proposed. This approach exploits the structure of HDR formats. It has an equivalent compression performance and the lowest computational complexity compared to the existing HDR lossy compressions (50% lower than the state-of-the-art). Finally, the shortcomings of the current HDR visual saliency models, and HDR visual saliency-guided compression are explored in this thesis. A spatial saliency model for HDR visual content outperform others by 10% for spatial visual prediction task with 70% lower computational complexity is proposed. Furthermore, the experiment suggested more than 90% temporal saliency is predicted by the proposed spatial model. Moreover, the proposed saliency model can be used to guide the HDR compression by applying different quantization factor according to the intensity of predicted saliency map.

Advantages of cache cooperation on edge cache networks serving dynamic web content were studied. Design of cooperative edge cache grid a large-scale cooperative edge cache network for delivering highly dynamic web content with varying server update frequencies was presented. A cache clouds-based architecture was proposed to promote low-cost cache cooperation in cooperative edge cache grid. An Internet landmarks-based scheme, called selective landmarks-based server-distance sensitive clustering scheme, for grouping edge caches into cooperative clouds was presented. Dynamic hashing technique for efficient, load-balanced, and reliable documents lookups and updates was presented. Utility-based scheme for cooperative document placement in cache clouds was proposed. The proposed architecture and techniques were evaluated through trace-based simulations using both real-world and synthetic traces. Results showed that the proposed techniques provide significant performance benefits. A framework for automatically detecting cache-effective fragments in dynamic web pages was presented. Two types of fragments in web pages, namely, shared fragments and lifetime-personalization fragments were identified and formally defined. A hierarchical fragment-aware web page model called the augmented-fragment tree model was proposed. An efficient algorithm to detect maximal fragments that are shared among multiple documents was proposed. A practical algorithm for detecting fragments based on their lifetime and personalization characteristics was designed. The proposed framework and algorithms were evaluated through experiments on real web sites. The effect of adopting the detected fragments on web-caches and origin-servers is experimentally studied.

Importance of web services increases as the technology improves and the need for the challenging e-commerce strategies increases. This thesis focuses on web market analysis of web sites by evaluating from the perspectives of static, dynamic and content. Firstly, web site evaluation methods and web analytic tools are introduced. Then evaluation methodology is described from three perspectives. Finally, results obtained from the evaluation of 113 web sites are presented as well as their correlations.

The limited dynamic range of digital images can be extended by composing different exposures of the same scene to produce HDR images. This thesis is composed of an overview of the state of the art techniques and three methods to tackle the image alignment and deghosting problems in the HDR imaging domain. The first method detects the areas affected by motion, registers the dynamic objects over a reference image, and combines low-dynamic range values to recover HDR values in the whole image. The second approach builds multiscopic HDR images from LDR multi-exposure images. It is based on a patch match algorithm which was adapted and improved to take advantage of epipolar geometry constraints of stereo images. The last method proposes to replace under/over exposed pixels in the reference image by using valid HDR values from other images in the multi-exposure LDR image sequence.
El limitado rango dinámico de las imágenes digitales puede ampliarse mezclando varias imágenes adquiridas con diferentes valores de exposición. Esta tesis incluye un detallado resumen del estado del arte y tres métodos diferentes para alinear las imágenes y corregir el efecto ’ghosting’ en imágenes HDR. El primer método está centrado en detectar las áreas afectadas por el movimiento y registrar los objetos dinámicos sobre una imagen de referencia de modo que se logre recuperar información a lo largo de toda la imagen. Nuestra segunda propuesta es un método para obtener imágenes HDR multiscópicas a partir de diferentes exposiciones LDR. Está basado en un algoritmo de ’patch match’ que ha sido adaptado para aprovechar las ventajas de las restricciones de la geometría epipolar de imágenes estéreo. Por último proponemos reemplazar los píxeles saturados en la imagen de referencia usando valores correctos de otras imágenes de la secuencia.

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This thesis describes an application, AutoLex, for translating dynamic content on websites that use the Django web framework. AutoLex retrieves translations from the Google Translate service., stores them in a database using a single table, and serves them via a user-defined accessor. In doing so, AutoLex offers website owners a fast. cheap way to translate large amounts of content and to enable multilingual communication between users. Future improvements will include automated accessors. hooks for integration with caching applications, and improved translation generation and display.
by Katrina Michelle Ellison.
S.B.

Traffic volumes on the Internet continue to increase, with the same links carrying the same data multiple times. In-network caching can alleviate much of the redundant traffic by storing popular items close to the users. This was a master thesis project that involved building on existing research and simulators, simulating a multi-level hierarchical network cache system and its resulting performance, with varying parameters such as placement and sizing of the individual cache nodes. One of the goals of the thesis work was to improve and integrate the simulation frameworks used as a starting point. Another goal was to run simulations with the improved framework and shed light on how a high Quality of Experience (QoE) can be achieved within this kind of cache system, varying the input parameters. An improved and integrated simulation framework was produced, including improved visualization capabilities. Using this improved simulation framework, the behavior of the cache system was studied, in particular how the system behaves with static and dynamic cache sizing approaches. Conclusions drawn are e.g. that the dynamic sizing approach deployed can be a good way to achieve a high QoE. Finally, future research opportunities are identified.

Gemeinsamer Workshop von Universitaetsrechenzentrum und Professur "Rechnernetze und verteilte Systeme" der Fakultaet fuer Informatik der TU Chemnitz. Workshop-Thema: Mobilitaet Der Vortrag gibt einen Überblick über Content Management Systeme und Application Server aus dem Opensource-Bereich.

The phenomenal growth of Information Technology requires us to elicit, store and maintain huge volumes of data. Analyzing this data for various purposes is becoming increasingly important. Data mining consists of applying data analysis and discovery algorithms that under acceptable computational efficiency limitations, produce a particular enumeration of patterns over the data. We present two techniques based on using Logic programming tools for data mining. Data mining analyzes data by extracting patterns which describe its structure and discovers co-relations in the form of rules. We distinguish analysis methods as visual and non-visual and present one application of each. We explain that our focus on the field of Logic Programming makes some of the very complex tasks related to Web based data mining and dynamic content generation, simple and easy to implement in a uniform framework.

Games are irritating when they are too hard, and boring when they are too easy. Level Eight is a game development company which is, during this project, developing an endless runner. This thesis describes research and implementation of a dynamic difficulty adjustment system in Level Eights’ endless runner by considering several conditions of the player. This was accomplished with the help of the game environment by implementing procedural content generation and combine it with the dynamic difficulty adjustment system.
Spel är irriterande när de är för svåra, och tråkiga när de är för lätta. Level Eight är ett spelutvecklingsföretag som under detta projekt utvecklar ett ändlöst löparspel. Denna avhandling beskriver forskning och genomförande av ett dynamiskt svårighets justeringssystem i Level Eights ändlöst löparspel genom att överväga flera villkor för spelaren. Detta uppnåddes med hjälp av spelmiljön genom att implementera procedurell innehållsgenerering och kombinera den med det dynamiska svårighets justering systemet.

Avec l'expansion importante d'appareils connectés à l'Internet et l'essor du Web 2. 0, le contenu web se diversifie et devient de plus en plus dynamique. Afin de faciliter la diffusion de flux d'informations évolutives et souvent temporaires (news, messages, annonces), des nombreuses applications web publient les items d'informations les plus récentes dans des documents RSS ou Atom qui sont ensuite collectés et transformés par des agrégateurs RSS comme Google Reader ou Yahoo! News. Nos recherches se placent dans le contexte d'agrégation de documents RSS dynamiques et se focalisent sur l'optimisation du rafra”chissement et de l'estimation en ligne du changement de contenu RSS hautement dynamique. Nous introduisons et formalisons deux mesures qualitatives spécifiques à l'agrégation de flux RSS qui refltent la complétude et la fra”cheur moyenne du flux d'information agrége. Nous proposons une stratégie de rafra”chissement du "meilleur effort" qui maximise la qualité de l'agrégation par rapport aux autres approches existantes avec un nombre moyen de rafra”chissements identique. Nous présentons une analyse des caractéristiques générales de l'activité de publication des flux RSS réels en se focalisant surtout sur la dimension temporelle. Nous étudions différentes modles et méthodes d'estimation de changements d'activité et leur intégration dans les stratégies de rafraîchissement. Les méthodes présentés ont été implémentés et testés sur des données synthétiques et des flux RSS réels

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging is gaining widespread acceptance in computer graphics, photography and multimedia industry. Representing scenes with values corresponding to real-world light levels, HDR images and videos provide superior picture quality and more life-like visual experience than traditional 8-bit Low Dynamic Range (LDR) content. In this thesis, we present a few attempts to assess and improve the quality of HDR using subjective and objective approaches. We first conducted in-depth studies regarding HDR compression and HDR quality metrics. We show that High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) outperforms the previous version of compression standard on HDR content and could be used as a platform for HDR compression if provided with some necessary extensions. We also find that, compared to other quality metrics, the Visual Information Fidelity (VIF) quality metric has the highest correlation with subjective opinions on HDR videos. These findings contributed to the development of methods that optimize existing video compression standards for HDR applications. Next, the viewing experience of HDR content is evaluated both subjectively and objectively. The study shows a clear subjective preference for HDR content when individuals are given a choice between HDR and LDR displays. Eye tracking data were collected from individuals viewing HDR content in a free-viewing task. These eye tracking data collected are utilized in the development of a visual attention model for HDR content. Last but not least, we propose a computational approach to predict visual attention for HDR video content, the only one of its kind as all existing visual attention models are designed for HDR images. This proposed approach simulates the characteristics of the Human Visual System (HVS) and makes predictions by combining the spatial and temporal visual features. The analysis using eye tracking data affirms the effectiveness of the proposed model. Comparisons employing three well known quantitative metrics show that the proposed model substantially improves predictions of visual attention of HDR.
Applied Science, Faculty of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of
Graduate

Web portals are one of the rapidly growing applications, providing a single interface to access different sources (providers). The results from the providers are typically obtained by each provider querying a database and returning an HTML or XML document. Performance and in particular providing fast response time is one of the critical issues in such applications. Dissatisfaction of users dramatically increases with increasing response time, resulting in abandonment of Web sites, which in turn could result in loss of revenue by the providers and the portal. Caching is one of the key techniques that address the performance of such applications. In this work we focus on improving the performance of portal applications via caching. We discuss the limitations of existing caching solutions in such applications and introduce a caching strategy based on collaboration between the portal and its providers. Providers trace their logs, extract information to identify good candidates for caching and notify the portal. Caching at the portal is decided based on scores calculated by providers and associated with objects. We evaluate the performance of the collaborative caching strategy using simulation data. We show how providers can trace their logs and calculate cache-worthiness scores for their objects and notify the portal. We also address the issue of heterogeneous scoring policies by different providers and introduce mechanisms to regulate caching scores. We also show how portal and providers can synchronize their meta-data in order to minimize the overhead associated with collaboration for caching.

People often have difficulties finding specific information in video because of its linear and unstructured nature. Segmenting long videos into small clips by topics and providing browsing and search functionalities is beneficial for information searching. However, manual segmentation is labor intensive and existing automated segmentation methods are not effective for plenty of amateur made and unedited lecture videos. The objectives of this dissertation are to develop 1) automated segmentation algorithms to extract the topic structure of a lecture video, and 2) retrieval algorithms to identify the relevant video segments for user queries.Based on an extensive literature review, existing segmentation features and approaches are summarized and research challenges and questions are presented. Manual segmentation studies are conducted to understand the content structure of a lecture video and a set of potential segmentation features and methods are extracted to facilitate the design of automated segmentation approaches. Two static algorithms are developed to segment a lecture video into a list of topics. Features from multimodalities and various knowledge sources (e.g. electronic slides) are used in the segmentation algorithms. A dynamic segmentation method is also developed to retrieve relevant video segments of appropriate sizes based on the questions asked by users. A series of evaluation studies are conducted and results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the automated segmentation approaches.

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) and Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) have been used separately in games to improve player experience. We explore using PCG and DDA together in a feedback loop to keep a player in the "flow zone." The central tenet of this work is a conjecture about how the shape of the performance versus difficulty curve changes at the boundaries of the flow zone. Based on this conjecture, we have developed an algorithm that detects when the player has left the flow zone and appropriately adjusts the difficulty to bring the gameplay back into flow, even as the skill of the player is changing. We developed a game-independent algorithm, implemented our algorithm for the open-source Infinite Mario Bros (IMB) game and conducted a user study that supports the hypothesis that players will enjoy the game more with DDA - PCG algorithm.

As AI develops, grows, and expands, the more benefits we can have from it. AI is used in multiple fields to assist humans, such as object recognition, self-driving cars, or design tools. However, AI could be used for more than assisting humans in their tasks. It could be employed to collaborate with humans as colleagues in shared tasks, which is usually described as Mixed-Initiative (MI) paradigm. This paradigm creates an interactive scenario that leverage on AI and human strengths with an alternating and proactive initiative to approach a task. However, this paradigm introduces several challenges. For instance, there must be an understanding between humans and AI, where autonomy and initiative become negotiation tokens. In addition, control and expressiveness need to be taken into account to reach some goals. Moreover, although this paradigm has a broader application, it is especially interesting for creative tasks such as games, which are mainly created in collaboration. Creating games and their content is a hard and complex task, since games are content-intensive, multi-faceted, and interacted by external users.  Therefore, this thesis explores MI collaboration between human game designers and AI for the co-creation of games, where the AI's role is that of a colleague with the designer. The main hypothesis is that AI can be incorporated in systems as a collaborator, enhancing design tools, fostering human creativity, reducing their workload, and creating adaptive experiences. Furthermore, This collaboration arises several dynamic properties such as control, expressiveness, and initiative, which are all central to this thesis. Quality-Diversity algorithms combined with control mechanisms and interactions for the designer are proposed to investigate this collaboration and properties. Designer and Player modeling is also explored, and several approaches are proposed to create a better workflow, establish adaptive experiences, and enhance the interaction. Through this, it is demonstrated the potential and benefits of these algorithms and models in the MI paradigm.

A malicious web content manipulation software can be used to tamper with any type of web content (e.g., text, images, video, audio and objects), and as a result, organisations are vulnerable to data loss. In addition, several security incident reports from emergency response teams such as CERT and AusCERT clearly demonstrate that the available security mechanisms have not made system break-ins impossible. Therefore, ensuring web content integrity against unauthorised tampering has become a major issue. This thesis investigates the survivability of server-side static and dynamic web content using the Web Content Verification and Recovery (WCVR) system. We have developed a novel security system architecture which provides mechanisms to address known security issues such as violation of data integrity that arise in tampering attacks. We propose a real-time web security framework consisting of a number of components that can be used to verify the server-side static and dynamic web content, and to recover the original web content if the requested web content has been compromised. A conceptual model to extract the client interaction elements, and a strategy to utilise the hashing performance have been formulated in this research work. A prototype of the solution has been implemented and experimental studies have been carried out to address the security and the performance objectives. The results indicate that the WCVR system can provide a tamper detection, and recovery to server-side static and dynamic web content. We have also shown that overhead for the verification and recovery processes are relatively low and the WCVR system can efficiently and correctly determine if the web content has been tampered with.

Computer and Information Science
Ph.D.
This thesis presents the design and evaluation of content-based publish/subscribe systems for efficient content dissemination and sharing of dynamic and large-scale networked applications. The rapid development of network technologies and the continuous investment in network infrastructure have realized a ubiquitous platform for sharing information. However, there lacks efficient protocol and software that can utilize such resource to support novel networked applications. In this thesis, we explore the possibility of content-based publish/subscribe as an efficient communication substrate for dynamic and large-scale networked applications. Although content-based publish/subscribe has been used extensively in many small-to-medium scale systems, there is no Internet-scale applications that utilize this technology. The research reported in this thesis investigates the technical challenges and their solutions of applying content-based publish/subscribe in various applications in mobile networks and Internet. We apply content-based publish/subscribe in the interest-driven information sharing for smartphone networks. We design efficient approximate content matching algorithms and data structures. We study how to construct optimal overlay publish/subscribe overlay networks. We propose architecture designs that make Internet content-based publish/subscribe robust. We also design a name resolution system that enables content discovery in the Internet. These techniques are evaluated comprehensively in realistic simulation studies, and some of them are further evaluated on PlanetLab testbed with prototype implementations.
Temple University--Theses

Configuration capabilities are important for modern advanced network services. Network conditions and user populations have been significantly diversified after decades of evolution of the Internet. Configuration capabilities allow network services to be adapted to spatial, temporal, and managerial variations in application requirements and service operation conditions. Network service providers need to decide on the best configuration. Ideally, a network service should have all of its components optimally configured to most effectively deliver the functionality for which it was designed. The optimal configuration, however, is always a compromise between different metrics. To decide on an optimal configuration, the prominent performance and cost metrics must be identified, modeled, and quantified. Optimization objective functions and constraints that combine these metrics should be formulated and optimization techniques should be developed. More important, in the scenarios where the application requirements and system conditions change over time, the service configuration needs to be dynamically adjusted and strategies that guide the reconfiguration decisions need to be developed. Because the actual process of configuring a network service incurs configuration costs, an optimal reconfiguration strategy should be one that achieves a tradeoff between the (re)configuration costs and static optimization objectives. Furthermore, such tradeoffs must be based on the consideration of long-term benefits instead of short-term interest. This thesis focuses on understanding the strategies for dynamic (re)configuration of advanced network services positioned above the Transport Layer. Specifically, this thesis investigates the configuration and more important dynamic reconfiguration strategies for two types of advanced network services: Service Overlay Networks, and Content Resiliency Service Networks. Unlike those network services whose configuration involves mainly arrangement of hard-wired components, these network services have the ability to change service configuration in small time scales. This makes the modeling of application requirements and system condition dynamics not only possible but also meaningful and potentially useful. Our goal is to develop modeling and optimization techniques for network service configuration and dynamic reconfiguration policies. We also seek to understand how effective techniques can improve the performance or reduce the cost of these advanced network services, thus demonstrating the advantage of allowing configurability in these advanced network services.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-12T12:20:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Thesis - André Luis Cavalcanti Moreira.pdf: 3666881 bytes, checksum: 956e0e6be2bd9f076c0d30eea9d3ea25 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-28
Several works study the performance of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) under various network infrastructure and demand conditions. Many strategies have been proposed to deal with aspects inherent to the CDN distribution model. Though mostly very effective, a traditional CDN approach of statically positioned elements often fails to meet quality of experience (QoE) requirements when network conditions suddenly change. CDN adaptation is a key feature in this process and some studies go even further and try to also deal with demand elasticity by providing an elastic infrastructure (cloud computing) to such CDNs. Each Content Provider (CP) gets served only the amount of storage space and network throughput that it needs and pays only for what has been used. Some IaaS providers offer simple CDN services on top of their infrastructure. However, in general, there is a lack of PaaS tools to create rapidly a CDN. There is no standard or open source software able to deliver CDN as a service for each tenant through well-known managers. A PaaS CDN should be able to implement content delivery service in a cloud environment, provision and orchestrate each tenant, monitor usage and make decisions on planning and dimensioning of resources. This work introduces a framework for the allocation of resources of a CDN in a multi-tenant environment. The framework is able to provision and orchestrate multi-tenant virtual CDNs and can be seen as a step towards a PaaS CDN. A simple dot product based module for network change detection is presented and a more elaborate multi-tenant resource manager model is defined. We solve the resulting ILP problem using both branch and bound as well as an efficient cache slicing algorithm that employs a three phase heuristic for orchestration of multi-tenant virtual CDNs. We finally show that a distributed algorithm with limited local information may be also offer reasonable resource allocation while using limited coordination among the different nodes. A self-organization behavior emerges when some of the nodes reach consensus.
Vários trabalhos estudam o desempenho de Redes de Distribuição de Conteúdo (CDN) em diferentes condições e demanda e de infraestrutura. Muitas estratégias têm sido propostas para lidar com aspectos inerentes ao modelo de distribuição de CDN. Embora essas técnicas sejam bastante eficazes, uma abordagem tradicional de elementos estaticamente posicionados numa CDN muitas vezes não consegue atender os requisitos de qualidade de experiência (QoE) quando as condições da rede mudam repentinamente. Adaptação CDN é uma característica fundamental neste processo e alguns estudos vão ainda mais longe e tentam lidar com a elasticidade da demanda, proporcionando uma infraestrutura elástica (computação em nuvem) para a CDN. Cada provedor de conteúdo obtém apenas a quantidade de armazenamento e de rede necessários, pagando apenas pelo efetivo uso. Alguns provedores IaaS oferecem serviços de CDN sobre suas estruturas. No entanto, em geral, não existe padrão ou softwares de código aberto capazes de entregar serviços de CDN por meio de gerenciadores. Uma CDN PaaS deve ser capaz de fornecer um serviço de entrega de conteúdo em um ambiente de nuvem, provisionar e orquestrar cada tenant, monitorar uso e tomar decisões de planejamento e dimensionamento de recursos. Este trabalho apresenta um framework para alocação de recursos de uma CDN em ambiente multi-tenant. O framework é capaz de provisionar e orquestrar CDNs virtuais e pode ser visto como um passo em direção a uma PaaS CDN. Um módulo baseado em simples produto escalar para detecção de mudanças na rede é apresentado, bem como um modelo mais elaborado de gerenciamento de recursos. Resolvemos o problema ILP resultante dessa abordagem por meio de um algoritmo de divisão de cache que emprega uma heurística em três fases para a orquestração de CDN virtuais. Por fim, mostramos uma outra abordagem com algoritmo distribuído que usa informação local e que também oferece uma alocação razoável usando coordenação limitada entre os diferentes nós. Um comportamento de auto-organização surge quando alguns desses nós chegam a um consenso.

Recommender systems are information retrieval tools helping users in their information seeking tasks and guiding them in a large space of possible options. Many hybrid recommender systems are proposed so far to overcome shortcomings born of pure content-based (PCB) and pure collaborative filtering (PCF) systems. Most studies on recommender systems aim to improve the accuracy and efficiency of predictions. In this thesis, we propose an online hybrid recommender strategy (CBCFdfc) based on content boosted collaborative filtering algorithm which aims to improve the prediction accuracy and efficiency. CBCFdfc combines content-based and collaborative characteristics to solve problems like sparsity, new item and over-specialization. CBCFdfc uses fuzzy clustering to keep a certain level of prediction accuracy while decreasing online prediction time. We compare CBCFdfc with PCB and PCF according to prediction accuracy metrics, and with CBCFonl (online CBCF without clustering) according to online recommendation time. Test results showed that CBCFdfc performs better than other approaches in most cases. We, also, evaluate the effect of user-specified parameters to the prediction accuracy and efficiency. According to test results, we determine optimal values for these parameters. In addition to experiments made on simulated data, we also perform a user study and evaluate opinions of users about recommended movies. The results that are obtained in user evaluation are satisfactory. As a result, the proposed system can be regarded as an accurate and efficient hybrid online movie recommender.

Deformational properties of soil, in terms of modulus and damping, exert a great influence on seismic response of soil sites. However, these properties for sands containing some portion of fines particles have not been systematically addressed. In addition, simultaneous modelling of the modulus and damping behaviour of soils during cyclic loading is desirable. This study presents an experimental and computational investigation into the deformational properties of sands containing fines content in the context of site response analysis. The experimental investigation is carried on sandy soils sourced from Christchurch, New Zealand using a dynamic triaxial apparatus while the computational aspect is based on the framework of total-stress one-dimensional (1D) cyclic behaviour of soil. The experimental investigation focused on a systematic study on the deformational behaviour of sand with different amounts of fines content (particle diameter ≤ 75µm) under drained conditions. The silty sands were prepared by mixing clean sand with three different percentages of fines content. A series of bender element tests at small-strain range and stress-controlled dynamic triaxial tests at medium to high-strain ranges were conducted on samples of clean sand and silty sand. This allowed measurements of linear and nonlinear deformational properties of the same specimen for a wide strain range. The testing program was designed to quantify the effects of void ratio and fines content on the low-strain stiffness of the silty sand as well as on the nonlinear stress-strain relationship and corresponding shear modulus and damping properties as a function of cyclic shear strains. Shear wave velocity, Vs, and maximum shear modulus, Gmax, of silty sand was shown to be significantly smaller than the respective values for clean sands measured at the same void ratio, e, or same relative density, Dr. However, the test results showed that the difference in the level of nonlinearity between clean sand and silty sands was small. For loose samples prepared at an identical relative density, the behaviour of clean sand was slightly less nonlinear as compared to sandy soils with higher fines content. This difference in the nonlinear behaviour of clean sand and sandy soils was negligible for dense soils. Furthermore, no systematic influence of fines content on the material damping curve was observed for sands with fines content FC = 0 to 30%. In order to normalize the effects of fines on moduli of sands, equivalent granular void ratio, e*, was employed. This was done through quantifying the participation of fines content in the force transfer chain of the sand matrix. As such, a unified framework for modelling of the variability of shear wave velocity, Vs, (or shear modulus, Gmax) with void ratio was achieved for clean sands and sands with fines, irrespective of their fines content. Furthermore, modelling of the cyclic stress-strain behaviour based on this experimental program was investigated. The modelling effort focused on developing a simple constitutive model which simultaneously models the soil modulus and damping relationships with shear strains observed in laboratory tests. The backbone curve of the cyclic model was adopted based on a modified version of Kondner and Zelasko (MKZ) hyperbolic function, with a curvature coefficient, a. In order to simulate the hysteretic cycles, the conventional Masing rules (Pyke 1979) were revised. The parameter n, in the Masing’s criteria was assumed to be a function of material damping, h, measured in the laboratory. As such the modulus and damping produced by the numerical model could match the stress-strain behaviour observed in the laboratory over the course of this study. It was shown that the Masing parameter n, is strain-dependent and generally takes values of n ≤ 2. The model was then verified through element test simulations under different cyclic loadings. It was shown that the model could accurately simulate the modulus and the damping simultaneously. The model was then incorporated within the OpenSees computational platform and was used to scrutinize the effects of damping on one-dimensional seismic site response analysis. For this purpose, several strong motion stations which recorded the Canterbury earthquake sequence were selected. The soil profiles were modelled as semi-infinite horizontally layered deposits overlying a uniform half-space subjected to vertically propagating shear waves. The advantages and limitations of the nonlinear model in terms of simulating soil nonlinearity and associated material damping were further scrutinized. It was shown that generally, the conventional Masing criteria unconservatively may underestimate some response parameters such as spectral accelerations. This was shown to be due to larger hysteretic damping modelled by using conventional Masing criteria. In addition, maximum shear strains within the soil profiles were also computed smaller in comparison to the values calculated by the proposed model. Further analyses were performed to study the simulation of backbone curve beyond the strain ranges addressed in the experimental phase of this study. A key issue that was identified was that relying only on the modulus reduction curves to simulate the stress-strain behaviour of soil may not capture the actual soil strength at larger strains. Hence, strength properties of the soil layer should also be incorporated to accurately simulate the backbone curve.

De nos jours, les documents d’entreprise, créés par des applications telles que PowerPoint et Word, peuvent être utilisés et partagés par des terminaux dotés d’une connexion Web. Dans un contexte de conférence Web, les documents d’entreprise, particulièrement les diapositives, sont hébergés et partagés entre les participants de la conférence de façon synchrone. Quand des appareils mobiles sont impliqués dans de telles applications, le contenu (ex. : diapositives) doit être adapté pour respecter les exigences de l’appareil mobile. Plus important encore, cette adaptation doit fournir la meilleure expérience possible pour l’utilisateur final. Globalement, dans l’adaptation de contenu, deux tendances ont été étudiées: statique et dynamique. Dans la première, le contenu est adapté en un ensemble de versions en utilisant différentes combinaisons de paramètres de transcodage. Au moment où le contenu est demandé, la meilleure version, évaluée avec un certain critère de qualité, est sélectionnée pour être livrée. La performance de ce genre de solution dépend de la granularité adoptée; le nombre de versions créées. Dans l’adaptation dynamique, appelée aussi juste à temps, en se basant sur le contexte de l’appareil mobile, une version sur mesure est créée, alors que l’utilisateur est toujours en attente. Dans ce cas, identifier les paramètres de transcodage optimaux, sans faire de transcodage préalable, n’est pas une tâche évidente. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons un nouveau cadre d’adaptation dynamique de contenu qui permet l’identification, sans transcodage, des paramètres quasi optimaux (format, paramètre d’échelle et facteur de qualité). Deux formats ont été considérés dans cette recherche, à savoir des pages Web composées d’images JPEG et des pages Web XHTML composées de texte et d’images. Dans un premier temps, nous avons défini une mesure de la qualité d’expérience telle que perçue par l’utilisateur final. Cette mesure utilise la qualité visuelle du contenu ainsi que le temps requit au contenu pour atteindre sa destination, principalement affecté par les conditions du réseau. En utilisant cette mesure de qualité, nous avons proposé un cadre dynamique d’adaptation de contenu capable d’identifier, dynamiquement et avec une complexité minimale, les contenus adaptés quasi optimaux qui fournissent un meilleur compromis entre la qualité visuelle du contenu et son temps global de livraison. Le cadre proposé utilise des estimateurs de taille de fichier et de qualité visuelle d’images JPEG transcodées, proposés dans la littérature. Notre cadre est composé de cinq méthodes d’adaptation, chacune offrant un compromis différent entre la qualité et la complexité. La première, nécessitant une seule opération de transcodage, estime des paramètres de transcodage quasi optimaux. Les autres quatre méthodes améliorent la précision, en permettant au système de réaliser plus d’une opération de transcodage. La performance du cadre dynamique proposé a été validée avec un système statique exhaustif et un système dynamique typique. Globalement, les résultats obtenus avec la méthode proposée s’approchent de l’optimal et sont significativement meilleurs que ceux obtenus par le système dynamique typique. De plus, nous avons atteint l’optimalité pour un bon nombre de documents testés. Le cadre dynamique proposé a été appliqué à des diapositives “OpenOffice Impress”. Il a été conçu pour être général et des travaux futurs peuvent être réalisés pour valider son applicabilité à d’autres types de documents d’entreprise, tels que Word (texte) et Excel (tableur).

Despite over a century of inquiry, the mechanisms that achieve the close matching of oxygen supply to demand during exercise remain elusive. It has been proposed that in addition to its role as the primary oxygen carrier, the red blood cell (RBC) functions as a roving oxygen sensor, linking the oxygen demand at the muscle with oxygen delivery via the circulation (Ellsworth et al. 1995). It is hypothesised that the RBC would release adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in proportion to the number of unoccupied binding sites on the haemoglobin molecule as it traverses regions of high oxygen demand such as the microcirculation of active skeletal muscle. ATP would then stimulate the release of vasodilatory substances from the endothelium which would diffuse to neighbouring vascular smooth muscle resulting in vasodilation and an increase in blood flow in accordance with the oxygen demand set by the muscle. The first step in establishing a role for this mechanism during exercise in humans is to determine whether ATP increases in the venous blood draining an active muscle bed. Based on the handful of published studies, there is an increase in ATP concentration in the femoral vein during knee extensor exercise. However the response has not been studied in other vascular beds in humans. As such, the main aim of this thesis was to measure the ATP response to dynamic handgrip exercise. Secondary aims were to determine whether the response was modified by hypoxia, and to provide information about the timing of the changes in ATP concentration during a bout of handgrip exercise. These questions were addressed in Studies 3 and 4. Because blood flow is central to this hypothesis, a substantial portion of this thesis was also associated with the measurement of forearm blood flow (FBF) using venous occlusion strain gauge plethysmography (VOSGP), and this was conducted in Studies 1 and 2. VOSGP is based on the assumption that with venous outflow prevented, any increase in limb volume is proportional to the rate of arterial inflow. The rate of arterial inflow is determined as the slope of the change in limb volume over time. The slope must be calculated over the initial linear portion of this relationship, when arterial inflow is unaffected by the inevitable rise in venous pressure associated with venous occlusion. VOSGP was initially used to measure blood flow at rest and in response to pharmacological interventions which produced only modest increases in arterial inflow (Joyner et al. 2001). However, measurement of the high rates of arterial inflow that occur with exercise may challenge the limits of this technique. Tschakovsky et al. (1995) reported a marked reduction in arterial inflow over the first four cardiac cycles during venous occlusion following static handgrip exercise that elevated blood flow to 22-24 mL/min/100mL. Only during the first cardiac cycle was arterial inflow unaffected by cuff inflation. As such, the window for measuring high rates of arterial inflow may be very brief. Therefore Study 1 aimed to determine whether blood flow could be measured using VOSGP across the range of arterial inflows that occur with dynamic handgrip exercise. Participants (n = 7) completed four, five-minute bouts of dynamic handgrip exercise at 15, 30, 45, and 60% of maximum voluntary contraction (MVC). FBF was measured using VOSGP at rest, and following five minutes of dynamic handgrip exercise. The slope of the change in limb volume was measured over the first one, two, three, and four consecutive cardiac cycles following the onset of occlusion. FBF was 2.5 ± 0.5 at rest, and 16.5 ± 4.9, 24.9 ± 9.4, 44.1 ± 22.0, and 57.8 ± 14.9 mL/min/100mL following five minutes of exercise at 15, 30, 45, and 60% MVC, respectively. At rest, arterial inflow decreased across the four cardiac cycles (P = 0.017 for the main effect), however post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed no significant differences between any of the cardiac cycles. In contrast, the inclusion of two, three, or four cardiac cycles at 30 and 60% MVC, and three or four cardiac cycles at 15 and 45% MVC resulted in reductions in calculated arterial inflow compared with using the first cardiac cycle alone (P > 0.05). The inclusion of just two cardiac cycles resulted in a 9-26% reduction in calculated arterial inflow depending on the workload. This reduction was even more pronounced when three (19-40%) or four (26-50%) cardiac cycles were included. In conclusion, resting FBF can be calculated over at least four cardiac cycles during venous occlusion at rest. However, exercising FBF should be calculated from the first cardiac cycle only following dynamic handgrip exercise across the range of intensities used in this study. This extends the findings of Tschakovsky et al. (1995) who demonstrated this effect following handgrip exercise at a single intensity. Study 2 was designed to establish the FBF response to dynamic handgrip exercise, whether the workloads produced different blood flow responses, and to establish the within- and between-day reproducibility of FBF measured using VOSGP. In Part A (within-day reproducibility), participants (n = 7) completed three trials of dynamic handgrip exercise at four intensities (15, 30, 45, and 60% MVC), with each exercise trial separated by 10 minutes of rest. In Part B (between-day reproducibility) participants (n = 7) completed three trials of dynamic handgrip exercise at 15, 30, and 45% MVC on three separate days within a two week period. FBF was measured at rest, and each minute of exercise during brief (5-7 second) pauses in contractions. FBF response. FBF increased from rest at all workloads (P > 0.05), and then plateaued between Minutes 1 to 5 at the 15 and 30% MVC workloads and between Minutes 2 and 5 at the 45% workload (P > 0.05 for each minute compared to Minute 5). Too few participants completed the 60% workload to permit any statistical analysis. FBF reached values of 13.0 ± 2.0, 26.8 ± 8.4, 44.8 ± 14.9, and 52.9 ± 5.1 mL/min/100mL in the final minute of exercise at the 15, 30, 45, and 60% MVC workloads. FBF was different between the 15, 30, and 45% workloads by Minute 3 (P > 0.05). Reproducibility. The within-day test-retest reliability of exercising FBF was poor to moderate (ICC = 0.375-0.624) with individual coefficients of variation (CVs) ranging from 6-25%, 9-23%, and 9-31% for the 15, 30, and 45% MVC workloads, respectively. The between-day test-retest reliability for resting FBF was moderate (ICC = 0.644, P > 0.05; individual CVs between 1 and 31%). Between-day test-retest reliability for exercising FBF was poor to moderate (ICC = 0.381-0.614), with individual CVs ranging from 14-24%, 8-23%, and 6-18% for the 15, 30, and 45% workloads, respectively. It was concluded from this study that VOSGP provides adequately reproducible measurements to detect changes in FBF of the magnitude seen between workloads in this study. However, the variability in the measurement precludes its use when smaller differences are of interest. Based on the previous findings reporting an increase in ATP concentration during dynamic knee extensor exercise in the leg (Gonzalez-Alonso et al. 2002; Yegutkin et al. 2007), Study 3 was designed to determine whether ATP concentration increased in the venous effluent during dynamic handgrip exercise in the forearm. Since the deoxygenation of haemoglobin is a primary stimulus for ATP release from red blood cells, a further aim was to determine whether this response was augmented by systemic hypoxia. Participants (n = 6) completed four, five-minute bouts of dynamic handgrip exercise at 30, 45, 65, and 85% MVC under normoxia (inspired oxygen fraction = 0.21) and hypoxia (inspired oxygen fraction = 0.12). Blood samples for the determination of ATP concentration were drawn at rest and 180 seconds after the onset of exercise at each workload from a catheter inserted into a forearm vein. Venous plasma ATP concentration at rest was 0.28 ± 0.11 μM/L and remained unchanged during exercise at workloads up to 85% MVC (P > 0.05). Systemic hypoxia, sufficient to reduce arterial oxygen saturation to 83 ± 2%, also failed to alter the plasma ATP concentration (P = 0.148). The lack of a change in ATP concentration was unexpected but there are several possible explanations. It is possible, although unlikely, that ATP was not released in the forearm microcirculation. The previous demonstration that ATP increased in response to static handgrip exercise (Forrester and Lind 1969) would suggest that this was probably not the case. When considered in the context of the findings from Study 4, the most plausible explanation is that a less than optimal blood sampling site may have hindered the measurement of a change in ATP. The blood flow response at the onset of dynamic exercise in the forearm is at least biphasic; Phase 1 describes the immediate, large increase in blood flow within 2 seconds of the onset of exercise and is believed to be governed by mechanical factors whereas Phase 2 has a latency of ~20 seconds and describes a further, slower increase until blood flow reaches steady state (Saunders et al. 2005b). The temporal characteristics of Phase 2, along with the fact that blood flow during this phase is closely related to the metabolic rate of the muscle, suggest regulation by metabolic factors. Currently there is scant evidence detailing the time course of vasodilator release, although it is important to demonstrate that the release of a vasodilatory substance precedes the blood flow response it is proposed to influence (Delp 1999). ATP is released from red blood cells in proportion to the offloading of oxygen and a reduction in the oxygen content of venous blood draining a muscle bed occurs within 10 seconds of the onset of exercise. Thus the release of ATP should follow soon thereafter. As such, Study 4 was designed to determine whether ATP increased in the venous effluent of the forearm following 30 and 180 seconds of dynamic handgrip exercise at 45% MVC; and whether this increase corresponded with a decrease in venous oxygen content. Participants (n = 10) completed two bouts of dynamic handgrip exercise at 45% MVC; the first was one minute in duration, and the second was four minutes in duration. Venous blood samples for the determination of ATP and venous oxygen content were drawn at rest and during exercise from a catheter inserted in a retrograde manner into the median cubital vein. Arterialised samples for the estimation of arterial blood gases and ATP concentration were obtained from the non-exercising hand. ATP concentration in arterialised blood from the non-exercising arm was 0.79 ± 0.30 μM/L at rest and remained unchanged at both time points during exercise (P > 0.05). ATP concentration in the venous blood of the exercising arm increased from 0.60 ± 0.17 μM/L at rest to 1.04 ± 0.33 μM/L 30 seconds after the onset of exercise (P > 0.05), and remained at this higher level after 180 seconds (0.92 ± 0.26 μM/L, P > 0.05 versus rest). This corresponded with a decrease in venous oxygen content from 103 ± 23 mL/L at rest to 68 ± 16 mL/L 30 seconds after the onset of exercise (P > 0.05) and 76 ± 15 mL/L (P > 0.05 versus rest) 180 seconds into exercise. Furthermore, at 180 seconds of exercise, ATP concentration was moderately and inversely related to venous oxygen content (r = -0.651, p > 0.05). In conclusion, this study provides the first evidence that ATP concentration is increased in the blood draining the exercising forearm muscles in response to dynamic handgrip exercise. The finding that ATP concentration was increased just 30 seconds after the onset of exercise is also novel, and particularly interesting in the context of the recently reported dynamic response characteristics of the forearm blood flow response. In conclusion, the work contained within this thesis provides several important findings. The first study has provided evidence that measuring high rates of arterial inflow using VOSGP is possible, but that the window for making these measurements is small, probably as brief as a single cardiac cycle. The second study demonstrated that while the reproducibility of forearm blood flow measurements using VOSGP is poor, it is adequate to detect the large changes that occurred between workloads. However, VOSGP cannot be used to detect more modest differences. Common to both Study 3 and 4 was the measurement of ATP at rest, and 180 seconds after the onset of dynamic handgrip exercise at 45% MVC. The primary difference was the position of the catheter which was inserted in an antegrade manner in Study 3, and in a retrograde manner in Study 4. Since ATP was unchanged in Study 3 but increased under similar conditions in Study 4, it is likely that ATP was also released during exercise in Study 3, but that a less than optimal blood sampling site precluded its measurement. This illustrates the necessity to sample blood from as close as possible to the probable site of ATP release, the muscle microcirculation. The most important and novel findings from this body of work come from Study 4. This is the first study to demonstrate an increase in ATP concentration in the forearm in response to dynamic handgrip exercise. However, the most novel finding was that ATP concentration was elevated just 30 seconds after the onset of exercise. Such an early increase has not previously been reported during dynamic exercise in any vascular bed. This is an important finding since establishing the time course for the release of vasodilatory substances is critical to our understanding of the mechanisms that regulate blood flow during exercise.

Many applications use multiple cameras to simultaneously capture imagery of a scene from different vantage points on a rigid, moving camera system over time. Multiple cameras often provide unique viewing angles but also additional levels of detail of a scene at different spatio-temporal resolutions. However, in order to benefit from this added information the sources must be temporally aligned. As a result of cost and physical limitations it is often impractical to synchronize these sources via an external clock device. Most methods attempt synchronization through the recovery of a constant scale factor and offset with respect to time. This limits the generality of such alignment solutions. We present an unsupervised method that utilizes a content-based clustering mechanism in order to temporally align multiple non-synchronized image sequences of different and varying spatio-temporal resolutions. We show that the use of temporal constraints and dynamic programming adds robustness to changes in capture rates, field of view, and resolution.

Role-playing games (RPGs) rely on interesting and varied experiences to maintain player attention. These experiences are often provided through quests, which give players tasks that are used to advance stories or events unfolding in the game. Traditional quests in video games require very specific conditions to be met, and for participating members to advance them by carrying out pre-defined actions. These types of quests are generated with perfect knowledge of the game world and are able to force desired behaviors out of the relevant non-player characters (NPCs). This becomes a major issue in massive multiplayer online (MMO) when other players can often disrupt the conditions needed for quests to unfold in a believable and immersive way, leading to the absence of a genuine multiplayer RPG experience. Our proposed solution is to dynamically create quests from real-time information on the unscripted actions of other NPCs and players in a game. This thesis shows that it is possible to create logical quests without global information knowledge, pre-defined story-trees, or prescribed player and NPC behavior. This allows players to become involved in storylines without having to perform any specific actions. Results are shown through a game scenario created from the Panoptyk Engine, a game engine in early development designed to test AI reasoning with information and the removal of the distinction between NPC and human players. We focus on quests issued by the NPC faction leaders of several in-game groups known as factions. Our generated quests are created logically from the pre-defined personality of each NPC leader, their memory of previous events, and information given to them by in-game sources. Long-spanning conflicts are seen to emerge from factions issuing quests against each other; these conflicts can be represented in a coherent narrative. A user study shows that players felt quests were logical, that players were able to recognize quests were based on events happening in the game, and that players experienced follow-up consequences from their actions in quests.

By augmenting an existing static medium (a graphic organizer) with attributes such that learners were able to sort or rearrange information in multiple ways, two new types of “dynamic” graphic organizers were created. An experiment was performed to investigate the effectiveness of these dynamic graphic organizers as instructional tools. One-hundred-sixty-one students were recruited for participation in the study from a two-year community college and a four-year public university in the southeast United States. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three graphic organizer treatment groups: static, sortable, and shuffle-sortable. Response accuracy and response latency measurements for three types of mental tasks (factual, comparative, and inferential) were compared across the three treatment groups. A multivariate analysis of variance showed no significant difference between the three graphic organizer types for response accuracy. A within-groups analysis of variance showed no significant differences in response accuracy between mental tasks within the static or sortable treatment groups. However, analysis of variance indicated that accuracy for inferential judgments was lower than that for factual judgments in the shuffle-sortable group. With respect to response latency, a multivariate analysis of variance revealed no significant difference between the three treatment groups. A within-groups analysis of variance showed significant differences in response latency between factual and inferential judgment-making for both the sortable and shuffle-sortable treatments. The sortable treatment had the most pronounced differences in latency between mental tasks, whereas no significant differences in response latency were observed within the static treatment. Participants in the two dynamic treatments reported much higher percentages of affirmative responses to the question, “Did you think your graphic organizer was an effective instructional tool?” with 82.7% and 81.5% responding “yes” for the Sortable and Shuffle-sort groups, respectively, and only 60.0% responding “yes” for the Static group. The graphic organizers in the study are known as adjunct displays and therefore each was associated with an accompanying text passage. Participants had the capability of viewing the accompanying text passage at will within the constraints of a five-minute graphic organizer study period. Analysis of variance revealed that participants in the shuffle-sortable group spent significantly less time viewing the text passage than participants in the static group, possibly because the overhead associated with the shuffle-sortable graphic organizer’s user interface controls consumed time or mental resources that would have otherwise been used to view the text. The results of this study suggest that dynamic graphic organizers are equivalent to traditional static graphic organizers, at least for the educational subject matter used in this study (comparative text comprising 204 words describing six fictitious species of fish, their attributes, and the relationships between these attributes) for measures related to accuracy. Additionally, participants in the two dynamic graphic organizer treatments took advantage of the affordances offered by those treatments (88.5% of the Sortable group sorted, 75.9% of the Shuffle-sort group sorted, and 88.9% of the Shuffle-sort group shuffled). This study may benefit both instructional designers and educational researchers as new curricula are designed and new instructional tools are studied, respectively.

The malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum 1s dependent on tightly regulated gene expression for its progression through the intra-erythrocytic life cycle, pathogenesis and establishment of persistent infection by evasion of the human host's immune system. Evidence points towards P. falciparum being unusually dependent on nuclear architecture and genomic organisation for the control of gene expression. Spatially defined nuclear regions of transcriptional activity have been detected and the spatial positioning of loci may determine their transcriptional potential. Additionally, a number of epigenetic markers have been shown to occupy spatially distinct subcompartments of the nuclear volume. Limitations of microscopic assays used until now have left us with a stereotyped and incomplete image of the organisation of the parasite nucleus and the transcriptional and epigenetic factors involved in the regulation of parasite gene expression, and the possible dynamics thereof. This work focused on the use of high-content and super-resolution fluorescent microscopy for the study and graphical representation of the spatial organisation of various nuclear factors involved in transcriptional regulation in P. falciparum parasites. The first objective (chapter 2) establishes P. falciparum parasite sample preparation and fluorescent labeling techniques for microscopy. Immunofluorescent labeling of var gene associated transcription repressive and permissive histone modifications, H3K9me3 and H3K9ac, respectively, as well as serine 2- phosphorylated RNA polymerase II and the putative transcription and splicing factor PfMyb2, was optimised. DNA fluorescent in situ hybridisation was also optimised for labeling of var gene exons. In the second objective (chapter 3), the assays established in the previous chapter are used for high-content combinatorial labeling in thousands of nuclei, followed by analysis using a bespoke computational algorithm for the detection and classification of different labeling patterns. This approach revealed a high level of diversity in the nuclear distributions of each assayed target. Superresolution stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy was used to further study the sub-diffraction organisation of selected labeling patterns. The data presented in this dissertation reveal that the complex spatial organisation of certain nuclear factors is subject to greater diversity within the nucleus of P. falciparum parasites than previously thought.
Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
gm2013
Biochemistry
unrestricted

This thesis investigates the effects of using various percentages of RAP and asphalt binder contents on the dynamic modulus and fatigue resistance of asphalt concrete. Two RAP percentages (20% and 40%) and three binder percentages (plant-mixed, plant-mixed + 0.5%, and plant-mixed + 1.0%) were evaluated. A Superpave gyratory compactor and an asphalt vibratory compactor were used to prepare dynamic modulus samples and fatigue beam samples at 7% air voids. Three replicate samples for each percentage of RAP and asphalt binder content were prepared for testing purposes. An Interlaken Technology Corporation servohydraulic testing machine and a Material Testing System servohydraulic machine were used to determine the dynamic modulus and fatigue resistance of the asphalt samples. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if any of the factors (air voids, percent RAP, and percent asphalt binder) affected the performance criteria (dynamic modulus and fatigue life cycles). Results suggest that as the amount of RAP increases in asphalt concrete, both the dynamic modulus and fatigue life will increase. As per the literature, these results were expected for the dynamic modulus, but not for the fatigue life. It is suspected that the increase in fatigue life for the 40% RAP mixes may be due to the use of a softer binder (PG 64-22 instead of PG 70-22).  It was also found that by increasing the amount of binder in the mixture, the stiffness of asphalt concrete will decrease, but the fatigue life will improve. The fatigue life results showed a strong trend of this improvement for the 20% RAP samples, however, the results for the 40% RAP samples were inconclusive. For dynamic modulus, it was found that the percent RAP, additional binder, frequency, and temperature were all statistically significant with 95% confidence. For the fatigue life, ANOVA showed that the percent RAP and additional binder were statistically significant with 95% confidence. These results suggest that by utilizing a higher percentage of RAP and asphalt binder, it is possible to meet or improve upon the dynamic modulus and fatigue life of the lower percentage of RAP samples.
Master of Science

Procedural content generation for video games (PCGG) has seen a steep increase in the past decade, aiming to foster emergent gameplay as well as to address the challenge of producing large amounts of engaging content quickly. Most work in PCGG has been focused on generating art and assets such as levels, textures, and models, or on narrative design to generate storylines and progression paths. Given the difficulty of generating harmonically pleasing and interesting music, procedural music generation for games (PMGG) has not seen as much attention during this time. Music in video games is essential for establishing developers' intended mood and environment. Given the deficit of PMGG content, this paper aims to address the demand for high-quality PMGG. This paper describes the system developed to solve this problem, which generates thematic music for non-player characters (NPCs) based on developer-defined attributes in real time and responds to the dynamic relationship between the player and target NPC. The system was evaluated by means of user study: participants confront four NPC bosses each with their own uniquely generated dynamic track based on their varying attributes in relation to the player's. The survey gathered information on the perceived quality, dynamism, and helpfulness to gameplay of the generated music. Results showed that the generated music was generally pleasing and harmonious, and that while players could not detect the details of how, they were able to detect a general relationship between themselves and the NPCs as reflected by the music.

The malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum 1s dependent on tightly regulated gene expression for its progression through the intra-erythrocytic life cycle, pathogenesis and establishment of persistent infection by evasion of the human host's immune system. Evidence points towards P. falciparum being unusually dependent on nuclear architecture and genomic organisation for the control of gene expression. Spatially defined nuclear regions of transcriptional activity have been detected and the spatial positioning of loci may determine their transcriptional potential. Additionally, a number of epigenetic markers have been shown to occupy spatially distinct subcompartments of the nuclear volume. Limitations of microscopic assays used until now have left us with a stereotyped and incomplete image of the organisation of the parasite nucleus and the transcriptional and epigenetic factors involved in the regulation of parasite gene expression, and the possible dynamics thereof. This work focused on the use of high-content and super-resolution fluorescent microscopy for the study and graphical representation of the spatial organisation of various nuclear factors involved in transcriptional regulation in P. falciparum parasites. The first objective (chapter 2) establishes P. falciparum parasite sample preparation and fluorescent labeling techniques for microscopy. Immunofluorescent labeling of var gene associated transcription repressive and permissive histone modifications, H3K9me3 and H3K9ac, respectively, as well as serine 2- phosphorylated RNA polymerase II and the putative transcription and splicing factor PfMyb2, was optimised. DNA fluorescent in situ hybridisation was also optimised for labeling of var gene exons. In the second objective (chapter 3), the assays established in the previous chapter are used for high-content combinatorial labeling in thousands of nuclei, followed by analysis using a bespoke computational algorithm for the detection and classification of different labeling patterns. This approach revealed a high level of diversity in the nuclear distributions of each assayed target. Superresolution stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy was used to further study the sub-diffraction organisation of selected labeling patterns. The data presented in this dissertation reveal that the complex spatial organisation of certain nuclear factors is subject to greater diversity within the nucleus of P. falciparum parasites than previously thought.
Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
gm2013
Biochemistry
unrestricted

AR is hypothesized to comprise above-threshold academic language proficiency, personal characteristics, topical knowledge, academic skills, and academic auxiliaries (motivation, study skills, engagement, work drive, emotional stability, affective schemata, and metacognitive strategies).The participants were 36 international adults, studying pre-university academic English at intensive institutes in Florida who volunteered to take the CLEAR during the summer of 2004. Data were collected via the CLEAR multiple-choice knowledge test and essay test, teacher ratings, examinee feedback, and external measures.Results showed the CLEAR knowledge test functions well at the item level although overall scores are only moderately consistent. The essay scoring consistency was satisfactory, perhaps partly due to the purpose-built scoring tool Good support for content-related validity claims was found for the dynamic simulation overall, for the stimulus materials, for the knowledge test items, for the essay prompt, and for the essay scoring tool. The concurrent measure of teacher ratings correlated with the knowledge test, but not with the content-based essay. Concerning construct-related claims of validity, support was evinced through the literature review as well as through inter-subtest correlation. External measures suggested some discriminant evidentiary support. Examinees perceived that the CLEAR closely resembled the target environment, they judged the CLEAR quality to be a key feature, and they would recommend the CLEAR to a friend for the growth experience.

This thesis contributes to the modeling, understanding and efficient communication in dynamic networks populating the periphery of the Internet. By dynamic networks, we refer to networks that can be modeled by dynamic graphs in which nodes and links change temporally. In the first part of the thesis, we propose a new mobility model - STEPS - which captures a wide spectrum of human mobility behavior. STEPS implements two fundamental principles of human mobility: preferential attachment and attractor. We show that this simple parametric model is able to capture the salient statistical properties of human mobility such as the distribution of inter-contact/contact time. In the second part, using STEPS, we analyze the fundamental behavioral and structural properties of opportunistic networks. We redefine in the context of dynamic networks the concept of small world structure and show how such a structure can emerge. In particular, we show that highly dynamic nodes can play the role of bridges between disconnected components, helping to significantly reduce the length of network path and contribute to the emergence of small-world phenomenon in dynamic networks. We propose a way to model this phenomenon in STEPS. From a regular dynamic network in which nodes limit their mobility to their respective preferential areas. We rewire this network by gradually injecting highly nomadic nodes moving between different areas. We show that when the ratio of such nomadic nodes is around 10%, the network has small world structure with a high degree of clustering and a low characteristic path length. The third contribution of this thesis is the study of the impact of disorder and contact irregularity on the communication capacity of a dynamic network. We analyze the degree of disorder of real opportunistic networks and show that if used correctly, it can significantly improve routing performances. We then introduce a model to capture the degree of disorder in a dynamic network. We propose two simple and efficient algorithms that exploit the temporal structure of a dynamic network to deliver messages with a good tradeoff between resource usage and performance. The simulation and analytical results show that this type of algorithm is more efficient than conventional approaches. We also highlight also the network structure for which this type of algorithm achieves its optimum performance. Based on this theoretical result, we propose a new efficient routing protocol for content centric opportunistic networks. In this protocol, nodes maintain, through their opportunistic contacts, an utility function that summarizes their spatio-temporal proximity to other nodes. As a result, routing in this context consists in following the steepest slopes of the gradient field leading to the destination node. This property leads to a simple and effective algorithm routing that can be used both in the context of IP networks and content centric networks. The simulation results show that this protocol outperforms traditional routing protocols already defined for opportunistic networks. The last contribution of this thesis is to highlight the potential application of dynamic networks in the context of "mobile cloud computing." Using the particle optimization techniques, we show that mobility can significantly increase the processing capacity of dynamic networks. In addition, we show that the dynamic structure of the network has a strong impact on its processing capacity.

This thesis seeks to analyse the notions of historical and physical authenticity as applied to the contemporary cityscape. I propose that criteria of authenticity can be established through study of social interaction within the cityscape. Authenticity reveals itself as the spatial reflection of the lived experience of the city's inhabitants. Following the liberalization of politics and the media in 1987, Taiwan has become a maze of competing and conflicting ideologies and visual images. The cityscape of Taipei reflects this political and social change, making it difficult to distinguish between the authentic substructure and simulacrum. In such a complex environment, people cling to the concept of authenticity in order to retain their sense of identity. Taipei has therefore been chosen to examine how such historical, economic, social, political, and cultural factors impact on the transformation of urban environment. Shopping streets provide the best illustration of the conflict and negotiation between global and local culture in contemporary cities. They stimulate and witness a dialogue between historicism and capitalism. Asian cities, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei, express the adoption of Western market economies and the trend toward political liberalisation and democratisation in their modern architecture and lifestyle. Their cityscapes have undergone drastic urbanisation and become non-places, as a characterless and universal commercial culture has dominated the production of urban space. Their streetscapes, however, apparently so "inauthentic", are actually the genuine result of contemporary economic, social and cultural forces. The framework of my analysis is grounded on ideas and definitions of social space derived from the work of Henri Lefebvre and Edward W. Soja. Four particular areas are explored to establish a definition of authenticity: the history of development, the memory of place, visual simulation, and mobility within space. This framework is then applied to two representative streets, the historical Ti-Hua Street and the modern Chung-Hsiao East Road in order to investigate how the social, political, and economic changes that have resulted from the process of Westernisation are reflected in the spatial structure of these commercial streets. Through the application of this framework, the condition of authenticity is questioned and identified in the city.

This thesis investigates the effect of added asphalt binder content on the performance and volumetric properties of asphalt concrete mixes containing Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP). Mixes with three different percentages of RAP (0%, 20%, 40%) obtained from an asphalt producer and three different percentages of asphalt binder (design asphalt content, design +0.5%, and design +1.0%) were evaluated. Additionally, a laboratory produced mix containing 100% RAP with four asphalt binder contents (0.0%, 0.5%, 1.0% and 1.5%) was also evaluated in order to determine the binder level that optimizes mix performance for the extreme case in RAP utilization. Performance of the mixtures was evaluated based on three criteria: stiffness (dynamic modulus), fatigue resistance (flexural beam), and rutting resistance (flow number). Results showed that a 0.5% increase in binder content improved both the fatigue and rutting resistance of the 0% and 20% RAP mixes with only slight decreases in dynamic modulus. However, the addition of various amounts of binder to the 40% RAP mix led to a significant decrease in rutting resistance with little or no improvement to fatigue resistance. Volumetric analysis was performed on all of the mixes to determine how the added binder content affected mix volumetric properties. Results of volumetric testing, specifically asphalt content and Voids in the Total Mix (VTM) at the design compaction effort, Ndesign, revealed that the 40% RAP mix incorporated a significantly higher level of binder during plant production which very likely contributed to the decrease in rutting resistance once additional binder was added in the laboratory. Additionally, the gyratory compaction effort that would result in 4 percent VTM at the optimal binder content over the three performance tests, N4%, was calculated for each mix. Results indicated that the VTM for the optimally performing 20% and 40% RAP mixes were well below current Virginia Department of transportation (VDOT) production standards. In addition, N4%, for the optimally performing 20% and 40% RAP mixes was 50% or less than the current design compaction effort of 65 gyrations.
Master of Science

Cette thèse apporte des contributions à la modélisation, compréhension ainsi qu'à la communication efficace d'information dans les réseaux dynamiques peuplant la périphérie de l'Internet. Par réseaux dynamiques, nous signifions les réseaux pouvant être modélisés par des graphes dynamiques dans lesquels noeuds et liens évoluent temporellement. Dans la première partie de la thèse, nous proposons un nouveau modèle de mobilité - STEPS - qui permet de capturer un large spectre de comportement de mobilité humains. STEPS mets en oeuvre deux principes fondamentaux de la mobilité humaine : l'attachement préférentiel à une zone de prédilection et l'attraction vers une zone de prédilection. Nous proposons une modélisation markovienne de ce modèle de mobilité. Nous montrons que ce simple modèle paramétrique est capable de capturer les caractéristiques statistiques saillantes de la mobilité humaine comme la distribution des temps d'inter-contacts et de contacts. Dans la deuxième partie, en utilisant STEPS, nous analysons les propriétés comportementales et structurelles fondamentales des réseaux opportunistes. Nous redéfinissons dans le contexte des réseaux dynamiques la notion de structure petit monde et montrons comment une telle structure peut émerger. En particulier, nous montrons que les noeuds fortement dynamiques peuvent jouer le rôle de ponts entre les composants déconnectés, aident à réduire significativement la longueur du chemin caractéristique du réseau et contribuent à l'émergence du phénomène petit-monde dans les réseaux dynamiques. Nous proposons une façon de modéliser ce phénomène sous STEPS. À partir d'un réseau dynamique régulier dans lequel les noeuds limitent leur mobilité à leurs zones préférentielles respectives. Nous recablons ce réseau en injectant progressivement des noeuds nomades se déplaçant entre plusieurs zones. Nous montrons que le pourcentage de tels nœuds nomades est de 10%, le réseau possède une structure petit monde avec un fort taux de clusterisation et un faible longueur du chemin caractéristique. La troisième contribution de cette thèse porte sur l'étude de l'impact du désordre et de l'irrégularité des contacts sur la capacité de communication d'un réseau dynamique. Nous analysons le degré de désordre de réseaux opportunistes réels et montrons que si exploité correctement, celui-ci peut améliorer significativement les performances du routage. Nous introduisons ensuite un modèle permettant de capturer le niveau de désordre d'un réseau dynamique. Nous proposons deux algorithmes simples et efficaces qui exploitent la structure temporelle d'un réseau dynamique pour délivrer les messages avec un bon compromis entre l'usage des ressources et les performances. Les résultats de simulations et analytiques montrent que ce type d'algorithme est plus performant que les approches classiques. Nous mettons également en évidence aussi la structure de réseau pour laquelle ce type d'algorithme atteint ses performances optimum. Basé sur ce résultat théorique nous proposons un nouveau protocole de routage efficace pour les réseaux opportunistes centré sur le contenu. Dans ce protocole, les noeuds maintiennent, via leurs contacts opportunistes, une fonction d'utilité qui résume leur proximité spatio-temporelle par rapport aux autres noeuds. En conséquence, router dans un tel contexte se résume à suivre le gradient de plus grande pente conduisant vers le noeud destination. Cette propriété induit un algorithme de routage simple et efficace qui peut être utilisé aussi bien dans un contexte d'adressage IP que de réseau centré sur les contenus. Les résultats de simulation montrent que ce protocole superforme les protocoles de routage classiques déjà définis pour les réseaux opportunistes. La dernière contribution de cette thèse consiste à mettre en évidence une application potentielle des réseaux dynamiques dans le contexte du " mobile cloud computing ". En utilisant les techniques d'optimisation particulaires, nous montrons que la mobilité peut augmenter considérablement la capacité de calcul des réseaux dynamiques. De plus, nous montrons que la structure dynamique du réseau a un fort impact sur sa capacité de calcul.