Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Stephen G. Sifferlen. / M.S.

本论文着重研究了带有Lp模球约束以及二次约束的多项式优化问题的计算复杂度以及关于此类问题的近似算法。在本论文中，利用张量对称化的技巧，我们首次证明了当P∈ [2 ，∞] ，任意高阶的带有Lp模球约束的多项式优化问题均为NP 困难。借助模的对偶性质，我们将这类优化问题转化为求解凸体半径的问题，从而使得我们获得了之前研究所无法使用的算法工具。具体来说，利用计算凸几何的算法工具，对于Lp模球约束的多项式优化问题，我们得到了近似比为[附圖]的确定性多项式时间近似算法，其中d为目标多项式的阶次， n 为问题的维度。使用随机算法，我们将近似比进一步提高为此类问题的己知最优值。[附圖]。此外，我们发展了计算凸几何当中对于凸体半径的计算方法，从而设计出了一种对二次约束多项式优化问题近似比为[附圖]的近似算法，其中m为问题的约束个数。我们的结果涵盖并提高了之前关于此类问题的研究结果。我们相信在本论文中使用的新的算法工具，将在今后的多项式优化问题研究中得到更广泛的应用。 / In this thesis, we present polynomial time approximation algorithms for solving various homogeneous polynomial optimization problems and their multilinear relaxations. Specifically, for the problems with Lp ball constraint, where P∈ [2 ，∞], by reducing them to that of determining the Lq-diameter of certain convex body, we show that they can be approximated to within a factor of [with formula] in deterministic polynomial time, where q = p=(p - 1) is the conjugate of p, n is the number of variables, and d is the degree of the polynomial. We further show that with the help of randomization, the approximation guarantee can be improved to [with formula], which is independent of p and is currently the best for the aforementioned problems. Moreover, we extend the argument of deterministic algorithm mentioned above to solve the quadratically constrained polynomial optimization problems. In particular, for any intersection of ellipsoids K, we can, in polynomial time, construct a random polytope P, which satisfies [with formula]. Then, by reducing the problem to that of evaluating the maximum polytopal norm [with formula] induced by P, over certain convex body, we can approximate the quadratically constrained problem within a factor of [with formula] in polynomial time. Our results unify and generalize those in the literature, which focus either on the quadratic case or the case where [with formula]. We believe that the wide array of tools used in this thesis will have further applications in the study of polynomial optimization problems. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Hou, Ke. / On title page "p" is subscript. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-111). / Abstracts also in Chinese.

This thesis examines the jewellery craft in Scotland between 1780 and 1914 with a focus on the relationship between materials, making processes, and the social and cultural meanings of objects. While dominant narratives of craft in this period frame producers as the victims of industrialisation, this thesis considers Scotland’s jewellers as cultural actors who shaped their own worlds during a period of profound economic, social and cultural change. A material culture approach is employed to examine the work of Scotland’s jewellers through the things they made. Fusing object-based research with a wide range of visual and textual sources, the thesis shows how producers applied their skill, knowledge and creativity to manipulate raw matter into meaningful objects that not only reflected, but brought about wider social and cultural shifts. Through a focus on materiality, the thesis builds on new methodological approaches to the history of material culture to show how the mutable meanings of matter and workmanship impacted on the ways in which jewellery was produced, consumed, worn and perceived. Scotland provides a rich area of focus for this study. The country has a long history of quality craft production in jewellery and silverware, with the geological and natural diversity of the region providing jewellers with precious metals, coloured stones and freshwater pearls. The study examines industry dynamics, artisanal education and making processes to show how jewellers fashioned an image of their craft that was rooted in ideas of history, inherited skill and quality. The life cycle of native materials is traced from their raw state through the workshop and on to owners’ bodies to reveal how changes in workshop production were inseparable from shifting aesthetics and cultural ideas relating to nature, landscape and the past. These findings complicate the persistent myth of the decline of craft as a result of industrialisation to show that the desire for Scottish-made jewellery stimulated new and revived skills and trades that cut across urban and rural areas. While the thesis is geographically specific to Scotland, it places luxury producers within the interdisciplinary domain of cultural history to provide new insights into the study of the multifaceted transformations that marked British industry during the long-nineteenth century.

Esta é uma pesquisa que tem como objetivo encaminhar uma sondagem do ideário contemporâneo que, midiaticamente, se desdobra em torno de uma palavra de ordem, ou seja, o termo bem-estar. Esse termo, o modo como comparece neste trabalho, foi considerado a partir do corpus desta pesquisa e que veio a ser o caderno Equilíbrio do jornal Folha de S. Paulo (de 01/2000 a 06/ 2005), bem como da pesquisa bibliográfica. A partir daí, levou-se em conta o termo bem-estar naquilo em que é colocado em questão um estilo sócio cultural de busca de felicidade que tem a experiência sensível do corpo, os cuidados com a saúde, a construção da beleza e a autonomia dos indivíduos como componentes de um Bem maior. Isto posto, esta pesquisa estabeleceu recortes específicos de abordagem do ideário de bem-estar que mantém em comum a perspectiva de que ele se coloca como forma de resposta àquilo que Freud chamou de mal-estar na cultura. O termo resposta interessa aqui na qualidade de investimento libidinal que privilegia certas formas de presença dos indivíduos no laço social. Dentre os recortes específicos dessa abordagem encontram-se: a questão das antinomias pertinentes ao laço social contemporâneo e o ideário de bemestar permeando-as na qualidade de um desdobramento de certa ética do bem-estar; a veiculação midiática de imagens de corpos implicados no ideário de bem-estar e a cativação que esses propõem, questão que remete às mídias como um Outro cujo olhar oferta reconhecimento e legitimidade identitária; consumo e bem-estar; o sucesso da psiquiatria contemporânea nas mídias e as promessas de minimizar os sofrimentos mentais através de intervenções técnicas no corpo. / This study has the objective of investigating contemporary ideas that, in the media, fall under the omnipresent catchword of \"well-being.\" In this present thesis, the term \"wellbeing\" is used exclusively according to the meaning found in the corpus of this study the section of the Folha de S. Paulo daily newspaper entitled Equilíbrio [Balance], which ran from January 2000 to June 2005 and in part of the bibliographic research. The term was thus used for aspects where it questions a socio-cultural style of seeking happiness in the sensorial experience of the body, health care, the construction of beauty, and the autonomy of individuals as components of a broader good. This having been established, the thesis sets up specific ways of approaching the ideal of well-being that have in common the perspective that the ideal is presented as a type of response to what Freud called \"discontent in civilization.\" The term response is of interest here, being understood as libidinal investment that gives special emphasis to certain forms of the presence of individuals in their social ties. Among the specific aspects in approaching notions of well-being are the following: the question of the antinomies pertinent to contemporary social ties and the ideal of well-being that permeates them as consequences of a certain ethic of well-being; the broadcasting by the media of images of bodies that fit into the ideal of well-being and the fascination that these bodies propose, a question that has to do with the media as an Other whose gaze offers recognition and identitary legitimacy; consumption and well-being; the success of contemporary psychiatry in the media; and promises to minimize mental suffering by technically acting on the body.

Although much of Gustav Klimt's work is well recognized, his painting Hope II (1907-1908) has received little attention in academic studies. Rejected by his peers on its initial exhibition, this work was found offensive by even his staunchest supporters. Second wave feminists have also been critical of his painting, finding in it an objectification of women. This is likely due in part to the central subject of the piece involving pregnancy. Klimt was unafraid to paint images that shocked and diverged from traditional aesthetic styles. During a time of rapid social change and development of the feminist movement, Klimt offered fin-de-siècle Vienna an image that invited conversations about female sexuality, identity, and fertility. This paper constitutes a rereading of Klimt as empathetic to the female experience by way of a close analysis of Hope II. The artist's closeness to many women indicates his awareness of their plight. His portrayal of fertility in this painting offered a new perspective of womanhood in art with a depiction of woman as autonomous and empowered. Criticism from second-wave feminists often follows Klimt's work. However, his continued representation of the female body should be read as a glorification of the body rather than objectification of it.

Reparative Rhetorics intervenes on the occasion of a long and tumultuous history wherein the public expression of women's pleasure is regulated, policed, and disciplined. Working firmly at the intersection of rhetorical theory/criticism and feminist theory/criticism, the project makes use of some of these humanistic legacies to excavate moments whereby women articulate themselves in public despite the structures of power that have historically sought to constrain these expressions. I argue that when women elaborate their pleasures in public, we are given a glimmer of things as otherwise--futures others than capitalist and patriarchal formulas of meaning. The dissertation critically maps these moments in public culture in the reparative mode. Informed by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, reparative reading strategies seek to "repair" the exclusively negative, bleak state of critical affairs. That is, while feminist and rhetorical scholarship often concludes its findings with the necessary (debilitating) effect of cultural ideologies, like patriarchy and capitalism, reparative criticism, instead, invests itself with the everyday, on-the-ground rhetorical enactments of individuals actually living, breathing, surviving, and thriving in culture. By moving from structure to the everyday within that structure, we are better able to attend to moments of human invention and agency. The dissertation carries with it three scholarly commitments. First, through each case-study chapter, I aim to expand that which "counts" as a matter of public concern. As is well-known, not all sexual practices enjoy the same level of public comfort. The dissertation queries where we might expand the scope of these public/private demarcations within contexts like sadomasochism practices, women's magazines, discussions about women's orgasm, and body visibilities. Second, the dissertation examines the ethics that undergird the expression of pleasure in public. Each chapter contributes to this discussion by asking to what extent holding the question of sexual ethics open is (im)possible. Third, the project aims to reinvest women with sexual agency by engaging in scholarship that does justice to their agential enactments. While much of the scholarly terrain remains committed to explicating how women are blindly trapped in an oppressive structure of control, this project instead, turns to moments wherein women voice themselves despite or because of those vectors of control. To animate this recognition, I draw from both cultural productions firmly at the normative center and the marginal periphery to critically map the effectivities of these constitutive articulations unto sexual-cultural meaning-making practices. In particular, the dissertation analyzes sexual publics forged around mainstream texts such as Fifty Shades of Grey (chapter two) and Cosmopolitan magazine (chapter one) in an effort to rescue these cultures from exclusively paranoid judgments and, instead, ask what a reparative reading strategy might offer these discourses of pleasure. Additionally, I also look to the marked margins, wherein sexual publics are born out of political discussions about women's orgasms (chapter four) and the (in)visibilities of women's bodies (chapter three) to imagine what kinds of sexual avenues are made possible therein. The three contributions emphasize the tremendous importance of attuning ourselves to context while critically preparing for the provisionality of cultural assessments. Taken together, the case-studies approximate that end and seek to highlight the multivocality of productive pleasure expressions in our everyday lives. The mode in which I engage these commitments serves a critical purpose often overlooked when scholars, teachers, and activists begin assessing women's relationships to sex, pleasure, and desire. A now oft-repeated trope in approaching these problematics surfaces as the question: is this liberating or oppressive? Are women, in this instance, hapless victims or transgressive agents? Reparative Rhetorics elucidates the naivety of such questions because lived realities are surely more complex than either/or explanatory logics. To ask if women are hapless victims or transgressive agents in this or that socio-political moment predestines the critical process to simplistic rhetorical assessments so inflexible, their relevance to the production of humanistic theories, classrooms, and future research falters. The project concludes by proposing that sharing pleasure knowledges in public builds productive resources for navigating our social-sexual worlds.

The relationship between distinctive characteristic fluid-flow regimes and the sound radiation generated by them has been investigated, over a range of Reynolds numbers, for various single plates and two-plate arrays in nominally two-dimensional flows. In preliminary experiments, the characteristics of flow over single plates with rectangular cross-section and faired leading edges and over tandem arrays of an upstream plate with rectangular cross-section and faired leading edges and a downstream plate of rectangular cross-section were investigated, together with the sound radiation produced. However, the main investigation has been concentrated on single plates of rectangular cross-section with various chord-to-thickness ratios C and on arrays of two plates of rectangular cross-section in tandem having various chord-to-thickness ratios C₁ and C₂ and a range of gaps (with gap-to-thickness ratios G) between them. The range of Reynolds number based on plate thickness t and free-stream velocity U, Re[subscript]t = Ut/ν (where ν is the kinematic viscosity of fluid) covered in the measurements is 3.2 x 10[superscript]3 ≤ Re[subscript]t 53 x 10[superscript]3. Spectra of velocity fluctuations in the flow and radiated sound have been measured and their characteristic frequencies related. An attempt has been made to measure force fluctuations on surfaces of the plates in order to relate them to flow characteristics and radiated sound power. Mean and fluctuating pressures associated with the force fluctuations on the plates have also been obtained. The lengths of separation bubbles on long rectangular plates have also been determined. In most cases, the measurements have been complemented by flow-visualisation in a water tunnel to provide additional detailed insight into the flow patterns. Three flow regimes have been identified for single plates of rectangular cross-section. In the first regime (1 ≤ C ≤ 3.13), shear layers separated from the leading edges form a vortex street downstream of the plate without reattachment to it. Associated force fluctuations on the plate are the main source of acoustic radiation. In the second regime (3.05 ≤ C ≤ 9.65), the separated shear layers reattach intermittently to the streamwise plate surfaces. Vortex formation in the shear layer is the dominant cause of sound radiation but the effect becomes weaker as C increases. In the third regime (6.52 ≤ C ≤ 68), the separated shear layers form closed leading-edge separation bubbles. Weak vortex shedding, with only a small contribution to the sound radiation, occurs only at the trailing edges of the plate. Bistable behaviour of the flow over a plate, with random switching between the regimes, occurs for C ≈ 3 and 6.52 ≤ C ≤ 9.65. A proposed classification of possible flow regimes for the flow around two plates of rectangular cross-section in tandem has been confirmed experimentally. For small G, the flow in the gap between the plates is isolated from the external flow. When the gap G between the plates is increased to or beyond a critical value (between 2 and 3.5), the shear layers separated from the upstream plate form a von Karman vortex street in the gap before interacting with the downstream plate. Flow and acoustic measurements indicate that this transition is associated with dramatic changes in the flow character. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1320474 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mechanical Engineering, 2008

<p>I dagens spelindustri baseras nästan samtliga 3D-spel på fysiksimuleringar med stela kroppar (rigid bodies). Examensarbetet undersöker vilka alternativa modeller som finns för att simulera mjuka deformerbara objekt, deformerbara i det avseendet att de kan ändra form och inte nödvändigtvis att de kan gå sönder i flera bitar. Rapporten inleds med en undersökande del som tar upp några existerande metoder för att hantera dynamiken inom ett mjukt objekt för att sedan beskriva en metod i detalj som dessutom implementeras i ett kodbibliotek. Ett deformerbart objekt är inte så spännande om det inte finns något sätt att deformera det på, därför undersöks även hur kollisionshantering kan gå till. Även här har rapporten först en undersökande del för att sedan beskriva en specifik metod i detalj som implementeras i kodbiblioteket. Examensarbetet resulterar i slutändan i en grundläggande interaktiv simuleringsmiljö för mjuka deformerbara objekt i form av ett kodbibliotek.</p>

Thesis (M.Phil.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2006. / "Submitted to Department of Applied Social Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-133)

The study of infinitely long cylinders of constant cross-section floating in an infinite fluid bath in zero-gravity environments has primarily been focused on bodies whose cross-sections are strictly convex and sufficiently smooth. In this thesis, our efforts are concentrated on the consideration of bodies that are only convex and piecewise smooth. These types of bodies are seldom considered in current literature. We have worked with a series expansion of the energy function in order to determine when configurations of a given body will be in equilibrium, stable or otherwise. We have proven that any convex body with a straight side cannot float in a stable equilibrium with the fluid interface intersecting the interior of the straight side in a single point. This fact is then used to prove necessary and sufficient conditions for stable equilibrium of polygons, bodies whose cross-sections are comprised of only straight sides. We illustrate these conditions with several examples. In the latter portion of the thesis, we turn our attention to bodies in three dimensions. While past research has again been focused on strictly convex bodies, we began to consider bodies that do not meet these requirements by examining bodies of revolution. A condition for stability with respect to vertical variations of bodies of revolution is derived. We conclude with several examples of bodies of revolution, some of which interestingly relate back to an analogous two-dimensional shape.