The objective of my thesis is to extend the scholarship on colour in painting by focusing on how it is employed within the structuring framework of the orthogonal grid in the paintings of three contemporary artists, Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin and Gerhard Richter. Form and colour are essential elements in painting, and within the “essentialist” grid painting, the presence and function of colour have not received the full discussion they deserve. Structuralist, post-structuralist and anthropological modes of critical analysis in the latter part of the twentieth century, framed by postwar disillusionment and skepticism, have contributed to the effective foreclosure of examination of metaphysical, spiritual and utopian dimensions promised by the grid and its colour earlier in the century. Artists working with the grid have explored, and continue to explore the same eternally vexing problems and mysteries of our existence, but analyses of their art are cloaked in an atmosphere and language of rationalism. Critics and scholars have devoted their attention to discussing the properties of form, giving the behavior and status of colour, as a property affecting mind and body, little mention. The position of colour deserves to be re-dressed, so that we may have a more complete understanding of grid painting as a discrete kind of abstract painting. Each of the three artists I have examined here employed colour and grid in strategies unique to their work and its purposes. Ad Reinhardt arrived at his 1960s “black” paintings out of a background that included strong political beliefs, resistance to the dominant strain of 1950s Abstract Expressionism, and a deep interest in eastern religions and Buddhism. Agnes Martin shared Reinhardt’s interest in Buddhism and eastern religions, but chose to move toward the light in the atmospheric colour of her paintings, speaking of the quest for perfection of the mind in her writings and interviews. Gerhard Richter’s colour charts, a longstanding major subset of the vast range of this prolific artist’s work, speak to a need to go beyond his love of painting to the ungraspable substance of colour itself. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-27 12:34:58.813

The overall objective of this thesis was to understand better the mechanisms that shape the diversity in colour vision of fish, and to explore the adaptive significance of this divergence. Among the vertebrates, teleost fish show the greatest diversity in colour vision systems. The cichlid model system illustrates that the visual system of fish may differ among species, sexes, individuals, and life stages of individuals. The large number of available cone opsin genes, which have resulted from multiple opsin gene duplications, facilitates this high degree of variation in the mechanisms of colour vision. In general, cichlids possessed complements of four to five cone pigments, and these complements varied across species, sexes, and individuals. Additionally, lens transmission, cone pigment expression, post-receptoral sensitivity, and retinal circuitry differed across life stages of individuals. My results suggest that the diversification of colour vision across species and across life stages of individuals contributes to sensory adaptations that enhance both the contrast of zooplanktonic prey, and the detection of optical signals from conspecifics. Therefore, both natural and sexual selection may have worked in concert to shape colour vision in fish. Since light is more complex under water than on land, fish required four to six cone classes to reconstruct the colour signals reflected from aquatic objects. This suggests that the large number of cone pigments in fish have likely evolved to enhance the reconstruction of the complex colour-signals in aquatic environments. Taken together, these findings improve our understanding of the variable nature of fish colour vision, and, more generally, help unravel the evolution of photoreceptors and colour vision. / Thesis (Ph.D, Biology) -- Queen's University, 2012-05-14 13:16:50.276

At present, raw aqueous textile effluent produced by textile mills in Hammarsdale, KwaZulu- Natal is reticulated voluntarily to the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works owned by the eThekwini Municipality and operated by Ethekwini Water and Sanitation. Thereafter the treated effluent is discharged into the Sterkspruit River which flows into the Shongweni impoundment. The cost to these textile mills of treating this effluent is calculated using a trade tariff formula administered by Ethekwini Water and Sanitation. In principle this arrangement is governed as follows; • in the case of the textile mills, by Sewage Disposal Bylaws set by Ethekwini Water and Sanitation, and • in the case of Ethekwini Water and Sanitation by a licence issued by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry in terms of the National Water Act 36 of 1998. This Act prescribes a General Effluent Standard which specifies the quantity, quality and temperature of treated effluent which may enter a defined water resource such as the Sterkspruit River. In practice however, the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works is not licensed by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and operates temporarily according to an Exemption Permit issued to Umgeni Water who owned and operated the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works until 2003. It is thus incumbent upon Ethekwini Water and Sanitation to obtain a licence from the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry in order to comply with the requirements of the National Water Act and be allowed to operate the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works on a permanent basis. However, because of design limitations, the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works cannot remove the visible colour continuously and reliably from incoming raw textile effluent. The consequence of this is that the Sterkspruit River is often contaminated by coloured discharges from the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works. In terms of the National Water Act this situation is illegal and must be remedied. The approach adopted by Ethekwini Water and Sanitation has been to amend the Sewage Disposal Bylaws to oblige the textile mills (by the use of permits), by certain dates, to remove all, or most of the colour (to specified levels according to the test method used) from their effluent before it will be admitted to the Hammarsdale Wastewater Works for disposal. The costs of compliance will have to be borne by the individual textile mills. This business case study explores the impact of this obligation on the business of Textile Mill A and examines solutions to the problem. After a review of the efforts of that company to conform with the concept of Cleaner Production, it was decided to perform an end-of-pipe effluent treatment trial using a skid mounted pilot-plant utilising an adsorption and flocculation mechanism followed by cold soda ash softening, 'polishing' through a column of granular activated carbon and the removal of calcium and magnesium through a cation exchange softening column. The results obtained were; • that the permit requirements of Ethekwini Water and Sanitation could be met, • that a financial 'break-even' point could be achieved at the start of the project in 2005 should 43% of the treated effluent be recovered for reuse, • that a realistic rate of water recovery would be 50% resulting in a positive contribution in present day terms (2004) of R65 000 in 2005 increasing to Rl 377 000 in 2014, • that this rate of recovery could be increased should a demineraliser be introduced into the treatment train, and • that the project could be financed by a vendor on a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer basis with transfer of ownership to Textile Mill A occurring after 5 years. The results of that trial showed that end-of-pipe effluent treatment is a viable option, technically and commercially, for Textile Mill A considering the current inclement trading conditions being experienced by the South African textile industry. It is also a means of assisting Ethekwini Water and Sanitation to comply with the requirements of the National Water Act. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

For centuries referential theories of language and meaning have dominated Western philosophy. The idea that noises and scratches become meaningful words and writing by virtue of a mental grasp one has on the referents they are talking about has become deeply entrenched. Starting with Plato, and reinvented by Locke, contemporary theorists continue to reproduce this mental fix requirement (MFR) in their philosophies of language and intentionality-Physicalists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland are typical. Plato, Locke and the Churchlands all share the view that bits of language reach out to extra-linguistic entities by some act of mind (for Plato the mind grasped referents via the Forms, for Locke Ideas bridged the relation, and the Churchland's, brain states). In each case a self-referential mental act gets language up and running, i.e. mental connections (or representations) to referents do the trick. My question also concerns what makes squiggles and noises meaningful. The question is a nested one-ancillary to it are questions of what makes language work? How do words mean or relate to the world? How do speakers mean certain things and not others? I will approach the question from a contextualist perspective where roles in rule-governed activities are the bottom line, not representations in the mind/brain.

Nowadays, there is growing interest in face detection applications for unconstrained environments. The increasing need for public security and national security motivated our research on the automatic face detection system. For public security surveillance applications, the face detection system must be able to cope with unconstrained environments, which includes cluttered background and complicated illuminations. Supervised approaches give very good results on constrained environments, but when it comes to unconstrained environments, even obtaining all the training samples needed is sometimes impractical. The limitation of supervised approaches impels us to turn to unsupervised approaches. In this thesis, we present an efficient and unsupervised face detection system, which is feature and configuration based. It combines geometric feature detection and local appearance feature extraction to increase stability and performance of the detection process. It also contains a novel adaptive lighting compensation approach to normalize the complicated illumination in real life environments. We aim to develop a system that has as few assumptions as possible from the very beginning, is robust and exploits accuracy/complexity trade-offs as much as possible. Although our attempt is ambitious for such an ill posed problem-we manage to tackle it in the end with very few assumptions.

Abstract The aim of this study is to identify the positive contributions women of colour (WOC) bring to higher education as they experience the process of becoming doctoral recipients. Their experiences are presented as a new epistemology—a theory of knowledge—as part of the larger area of cultural capital theory. The experiences of WOC in Canadian doctoral programs are conceptualized as ‘cultural wealth’ and new knowledge because evidence reveals that the intrinsic value of their contributions has evolved from unique cultural and historical resources. The discursive theoretical frameworks of Womanist theory, critical race theory (CRT) and cultural capital theory are utilized to guide the analysis of the findings. This study establishes the experiences of the participants as valuable and distinctive knowledge by emphasizing the intersectionality of race, class, gender, culture, and spirituality. The research suggests that the experiences of women of colour are informed by an inner wisdom woven from the mosaic, or uniquely diverse paths, which these women have taken toward earning their doctorate degree. The existing interpretation of cultural capital theory - originally established by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) - is considered the only social marker of wealth in socio-economical and educational research. Although previous studies have challenged this dominant perspective, this current study presents a unique interpretation of cultural capital theory by expanding the notion of cultural wealth from a Canadian perspective. This study highlights the importance of the racial/cultural context that is highly visible in Canadian culture but seldom addressed in higher education research. In addition, the aim of my study is to establish the wealth of “Mosaic Paths” found among the cultural identity of WOC, as a new epistemology in Canadian higher education. Specifically, the journey toward achieving a doctoral degree is often over-generalized in higher education. This study will reveal the realistic paths that WOC must traverse in order to realize their goals. Finally, the findings from the data reveal six major sources of cultural wealth: 1) Mother’s Influence, 2) Age Capital, 3) Mentorship, 4) Survival Strategies, 5) Negotiating Academic Culture or Know-how, and 6) Spirituality.

Evolutionary transitions between the two major predator avoidance strategies aposematism and crypsis are expected to be associated with changes in many important traits of animals. However, empirical studies on populations experiencing ongoing or recent transitions between these strategies are rare. This thesis investigates the co-evolution of traits among populations of the Strawberry poison frog D.pumilio in Bocas del Toro, Panama. I found that all investigated populations were genetically distinct but that colour and pattern did not correlate with genetic or geographic distance, which suggests that selection needs to be invoked to explain the observed variation. Based on the chromatic contrast between frog dorsal colour and the natural habitat substrates used by the frogs, the populations were defined as bright or dull coloured. I found that frogs from bright coloured populations were larger. This is expected if aposematism is enhanced by large signals while crypsis is enhanced by small size. Further, individuals from bright coloured populations had a coarser black dorsal pattern, which is expected if crypsis is impaired by a bold pattern. The importance of pattern coarseness was confirmed by an avian detection experiment showing that coarse patterned dark green prey were more easily detected than dark green prey without pattern or with fine pattern. I put forward the hypothesis that enhanced protection, gained by aposematism, may affect behaviours that influence dispersal and pairing patterns. Indeed, males from bright coloured populations displayed at more exposed sites and showed a tendency to be more explorative and aggressive. In summary, my results show that the bright and dull coloured populations most likely represent an aposematic and a cryptic strategy, respectively. Furthermore, I show that evolutionary changes between aposematism and crypsis can be associated with coevolution of both morphology and behaviour. I argue that this coevolution may increase the likelihood of both pre- and post-zygotic reproductive isolation. This is because greater phenotypic differences between populations increase the likelihood of selection against badly adapted migrants and hybrids with intermediate traits.

This thesis presents a complete self-calibrating illumination intensity-invariant colour classification system. We extend a novel fuzzy colour processing tech- nique called Fuzzy Colour Contrast Fusion (FCCF) by combining it with a Heuristic- assisted Genetic Algorithm (HAGA) for automatic fine-tuning of colour descriptors. Furthermore, we have improved FCCF’s efficiency by processing colour channels at varying colour depths in search for the optimal ones. In line with this, we intro- duce a reduced colour depth representation of a colour image while maintaining efficient colour sensitivity that suffices for accurate real-time colour-based object recognition. We call the algorithm Variable Colour Depth (VCD) and we propose a technique for building and searching a VCD look-up table (LUT). The first part of this work investigates the effects of applying fuzzy colour contrast rules to vary- ing colour depths as we extract the optimal rule combination for any given target colour exposed under changing illumination intensities. The second part introduces the HAGA-based parameter-optimisation for automatically constructing accurate colour classifiers. Our results show that for all cases, the VCD algorithm, combined with HAGA for parameter optimisation improve colour classification via a pie-slice colour classifier.For 6 different target colours, the hybrid algorithm was able to yield 17.63% higher overall accuracy as compared to the pure fuzzy approach. Fur- thermore, it was able to reduce LUT storage space by 78.06% as compared to the full-colour depth LUT.

Limes (Citrus latifolia Tanaka) are an attractive fruit crop but generally suffer a loss in value as their colour changes from green to yellow. Various approaches were taken to slow degreening including low temperature storage, use of controlled atmosphere (CA) environments, and treatment of fruit with physiologically active agents such as gibberellic acid (GA3). However, the cold storage life of lime fruit can also be restricted by a number of factors including chilling injury (CI) and rots. Various pretreatments such as the use of fungicide (thiabendazole, TBZ) and hot water dipping (HWD) and several postharvest regimes based on temperature conditioning (step down technique) and intermittent warming (IW) regimes were further investigated to protect the fruit against rots and CI during cold storage. The objective of this study was to determine what storage conditions and pretreatments would permit long term storage of NZ limes with minimal loss of quality. CA storage (10% O2 with 0 or 3% CO2) was compared to regular air storage (RA) and IW (varying durations) treatments across a range of temperatures. Although some CA storage regimes could assist in delaying degreening, none of the treatments provided protection against CI. CA storage at 3% CO2 delayed yellowing and gave better fruit quality than the low CO2 treatment. High CO2 CA treatments at 5 or 7°C decreased the rate of colour change compared to other constant temperature treatments but did not protect against CI. CI limited storage of fruit under all conditions at constant low temperatures. Including fungicide (TBZ) in the dip water reduced the incidence of rots and had a secondary effect on protection against CI of lime fruit. However, fungicide use may sometimes exacerbate stresses such as heat injury on lime peel. Hot water dipping has been shown previously to hold potential as a storage pretreatment, but this technique may give risk of damage on produce if it is dipped at too high a temperature. Some HWD treatments did delay degreening, but there was no major effect on CI. HWD at > 47°C for = 4 min caused heat injury to NZ limes. All HWD treatments showed severe CI (>15%) after 10 weeks of cold storage; and HWD fruit stored under RA at 13°C did not show any CI but showed some pitting (= 10%) and degreened rapidly. Overall no suitable HWD treatment for limes was identified in this trial. This project identified the critical periods and temperature conditions for successful IW of limes. The IW conditions successfully delayed losses in quality of lime fruit provided the first warming period was applied within the first 20 days of storage. At least 2-cycle IW was required to maintain lime quality during long term storage. Some benefits were found after just one cycle of IW treatment but there were not enough to extend storage life. IW storage benefited fruit quality and provided the highest overall fruit quality of all postharvest treatments tested. The degreening of lime during cold storage at 5°C could be delayed by IW treatments in which the fruit were stored at 5°C for 12, 16 or 20 days then moved to 15°C for 2 days. Both 2- and 6-cycle IW treatments proved satisfactory for maintaining colour on the green and yellow side of lime for 12 weeks of storage. IW treatments in which fruit were warmed within 20 day of cold storage did not show significant CI symptoms after 12 weeks of storage, and the 2-cycle IW treatment showed only a low percentage of CI fruit at this time. A 2-cycle IW treatment was almost as effective as 6 cycles, and a step down treatment also showed some promising results, indicating that it may be possible to further optimize the time and duration of variable temperature storage regimes to meet both quality requirements and the constraints of temperature management in commercial coolstores. The application of these regimes to other citrus species may also be beneficial. There are a number of physiological explanations that may account for the effectiveness of IW including positive effects on heat shock protein (HSP) and cell membranes. Nutritional factors such as vitamin C and flavonoid compositions were also investigated and fruit that did not show visible CI were found to retain at-harvest levels of these factors. Practical ways of implementing IW are discussed. In order to understand the effectiveness of IW on degreening, I used a logistic model to describe degreening of lime peel. This modelling approach demonstrated that IW did not change the mechanism of lime degreening based on the similarity between the hue values predicted by the model and the actual hue values measured during lime storage. The activation energy (Ea) for degreening based on either hue angle (H°) or colour score (CS) during air storage was estimated to be ~53 and ~86 KJ.mol-1, respectively. Relationship between colour (H° and CS) and chlorophyll content, relationship between reflectance spectra (%), chlorophyll content and H° of lime fruit stored under different conditions are presented and discussed. This data allowed deduction to be made about the changes in individual pigments that are driving colour change during “good” and “bad” storage.

The current knowledge of the visual pathways in primates includes the patterns of projection from the retina through the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) to the striate cortex (V1) and the extra-striate projections towards the dorsal and ventral streams. Cells with short wavelength sensitive cone (S-cone) inputs in the dLGN have been studied extensively in New World marmosets but not in Old World macaques. This thesis presents results from studies in the macaque monkey which are more relevant to humans since humans are closer in evolution to Old World than New World monkeys. / The spatial, temporal, chromatic and orientation preferences of neurons in the dLGN of the macaque were investigated by electrophysiological methods. The physiological findings of cells with S-cone inputs were compared to cells with opponent inputs from the long and medium wavelength sensitive cones (L-cones & M-cones, respectively). The cells receiving S-cone inputs (blue-yellow or B-Y cells) preferred lower spatial frequencies than the cells with opponent L-cone and M-cone inputs (red-green or R-G cells). Orthodromic latencies from optic chiasm stimulation were measured where possible to distinguish differences in conduction velocity between the cell groups. Although the B-Y cells usually had longer latencies than R-G cells, there wasconsiderable overlap between the cell groups. / The recorded cells were localised through histological reconstruction of dLGN sections stained for Nissl substance. The distribution of B-Y cells within the dLGN was compared to the distribution of R-G cells. The majority of B-Y cells were located within the intercalated koniocellular layers as well as the koniocellular bridges (extensions of the koniocellular layers into the adjacent parvocellular layers). The B-Y cells were also largely segregated within the middle dLGN layers (K3, P3, K4 & P4). The R-G cells were mainly concentrated within the parvocellular layers (P3, P4, P5 & P6) and were evenly distributed throughout the middle and outer layers of the dLGN. / The study also included recordings from the extra-striate middle temporal area (MT) to determine whether a fast S-cone input exists from the dLGN to area MT which bypasses V1. The pattern of cone inputs to area MT neurons was investigated before and during inactivation of V1. The inactivation was done through reversible cooling with a Peltier thermocouple device or focal inactivation with y-amino butyric acid (GABA) iontophoresis. Precise inactivation of V1 to the topographically matching visual fields of the recording sites in area MT revealed a preservation of all three coneinputs in many cells. The subcortical sources of these preserved inputs are discussed with their relevance to blindsight, which is the limited retention of visual perception after V1 damage. Analysis of the latencies of area MT cells revealed a rough segregation into latencies faster or slower than 70 ms. Cells both with and without a significant change in response during V1 inactivation were present in each group. The findings reported in this thesis indicate that some of the preserved inputs in area MT during V1 inactivation may be carried by a direct input from the dLGN which bypasses V1.