The distinctiveness of a face is a crucial factor for its ability to be discriminated, memorized, and identified correctly. In this thesis, we provided a contribution to face distinctiveness by examining the impact of socially relevant factors such as attractiveness, group and emotional expression on distinctiveness. We show that attractive faces are more similar to each other than unattractive faces, using female Caucasian faces and male faces of a Caucasian and heterogeneous Non-Caucasian group. We also show, using 3D face generated faces of photo-realistic quality, that attractive faces were closer to the prototype of only their specific group, and that hence typicality of attractive faces was group specific. Lastly, we show that assigning an emotional expression to a face that is evaluatively incongruent with its race makes it more psychologically distinctive, as revealed in perceptual discrimination and memory tasks.

The distinctiveness of a face is a crucial factor for its ability to be discriminated, memorized, and identified correctly. In this thesis, we provided a contribution to face distinctiveness by examining the impact of socially relevant factors such as attractiveness, group and emotional expression on distinctiveness. We show that attractive faces are more similar to each other than unattractive faces, using female Caucasian faces and male faces of a Caucasian and heterogeneous Non-Caucasian group. We also show, using 3D face generated faces of photo-realistic quality, that attractive faces were closer to the prototype of only their specific group, and that hence typicality of attractive faces was group specific. Lastly, we show that assigning an emotional expression to a face that is evaluatively incongruent with its race makes it more psychologically distinctive, as revealed in perceptual discrimination and memory tasks.

The present thesis is based on three studies that research different aspects of fine texture perception. The goal is to better understand the mechanisms involved in haptic perception of textures below 200 µm, also known as microtextures. Study I was conducted to establish a friction measurement model and relating the friction measurements to perceived coarseness of fine textures. A set of printing papers was used as stimulus material. In Study II an expanded set, including the set of Study I, was used as stimuli in a multidimensional scaling (MDS) experiment of haptic fine texture perception. Through scaling of perceptual attributes and similarities, a three dimensional space was found to best describe the data and the dimensions were interpreted as rough-smooth, thick-thin and distinct-indistinct. In Study III a series of model surfaces were manufactured with a systematically varied sinusoidal pattern, spanning from 300 nm to 80 µm. As in Study II, a similarity experiment was conducted and a two dimensional space was chosen, the dimensions of which were explained well through friction and the wavelength. Together these three studies form a better picture of fine texture perception. The dimensionality found with paper stimuli was very similar to the corresponding spaces for marcrotextures of everyday materials, even though a different perceptual system is used for fine texture perception. Regardless if the information is coded through the spatial or the vibratory sense, the perception does not seem to differ in dimensionality. Further, the largest among the microtextures seem to have been perceived as carrying spatial information. On the systematically varied, rigid, textures, the MDS space did not come out in a similar fashion to those of everyday materials but instead similar to the physical properties that characterizes the change in the textures. It was further found that the participants in Study III successfully discriminated textures with an amplitude of 13 nm from the unwrinkled surfaces. From these studies the main conclusions are (a) haptically measured friction and surface roughness are important contributors to fine texture perception, (b) even at microscales, spatial information is retrieved haptically, probably through vibrations, and (c) persons can haptically discriminate textures at a nanoscale.

A new multiresolution scheme based on interpolating scaling function(ISF) on adaptive gridding(AG) shows promising in the first principle calculation. We also use ISFs on solving Poisson equation(PE), and find good approximations on the expansions of the second derivatives of ISFs. It is simpler than the wavelet scheme and fully implements the fast wavelet transformation so that the method is very suitable to problems with frequently updating charge density such as the first-principle calculation in electronic structures in atoms, molecules, and solids. Although the scheme is similar to the AG scheme on real space, the ISFs can represent fields more effectively and it needs less grids than the scheme of real space does. This simple and effective method provides an alternative to both the real space and the wavelet methods in the first principle calculation. Also, The method can be easily parallelized due to the block structure of the grid layout.

This thesis deals with the problems of scaling aerodynamic data from wind tunnel to free flight  conditions. The main challenges when this scaling should be performed is how the model support, wall interference and the potentially lower Reynolds number in the windtunnel should be corrected. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations have been performed on a modern transonic transport aircraft in order to reveal Reynolds number effects and how these should be scaled accurately. A methodology for scaling drag and identifying scaling effects in general is presented.  This investigation also examines how the European Transonic Wind tunnel twin sting model support influences the flow over the aircraft. When the Reynolds number is differing between the wind tunnel and free flight conditions, a change in boundary layer transition position can occur. In order to estimate first order boundary layer transition effects a correlation based transition prediction method, previously presented by Menter and Langtry, is implemented in the CFD solver Edge. The transition model is further developed and a novel set of equations for the production terms is found through a CFD/optimizer coupling. The transition data, used to calibrate the CFD transition model,  have been extracted from a low Mach number wind tunnel campaign. At these low Mach numbers many compressible CFD solvers suffer of poor convergence rates and a deficiency in robustness and accuracy might appear. The low Mach number effects are investigated, and an effort to prevent these is done by implementing different preconditioning techniques in the compressible CFD solver Edge. The preconditioners are mainly based on the general Turkel preconditioner, but a novel formulation is also presented in order to make the numerical technique less problem dependent. / QC 20100903

Social networks have been evolving over the past few years, leading to a rapid increase in the number and complexity of relationships among their entities. In this research, we focus on a large scale dataset known as the Digital Bibliography and Library Project or DBLP, which contains information on all publications that have been published in computer and information science related journals and conference proceedings. We model the DBLP dataset as a social network of research collaborations. DBLP is a structured and dynamic dataset stored in the XML file format; it contains over 850,000 authors and 2 million publications, and the resulting collaboration social network is a scale-free network. We define DBLP collaboration social network as a graph that consists of researchers as nodes and links representing the collaboration or co-authorship relationships among the researchers. In this work, we implement a data analysis algorithm called Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) to represent the degree of collaboration among the DBLP authors as Euclidean distances in 2-dimensional space in order to analyze, mine and understand the relational information in this large scale network in a visual way. MDS is a useful technique for data visualization and graph drawing methods, but it has high computational complexity for large scale graphs such as the DBLP graph. Therefore, we propose different solutions to overcome this problem, and improve the MDS performance. In addition, as the quality of the MDS result is measured by a metric known as the stress value, we use the steepest descent method to minimize the stress in an iterative process called stress optimization in order to generate the best geometric layout of the graph nodes in 2-dimensional space. We also propose a solution to further enhance the graph visualization by partitioning the graph into sub-graphs and using repelling forces among nodes within the same sub-graph. Finally, we developed a new visualization tool that can handle the large scale of the DBLP graph, and provides the user a number of significant features that allow them to explore, navigate and sift for information through the graph, such as graph scaling and graphical search functionality. / UOIT

Purpose To investigate ocular surface sensations, specifically ocular discomfort using psychophysical and clinical techniques. The measurement of discomfort on the ocular surface has been limited to the use of traditional rating scales until recently. This thesis focuses on the scaling of discomfort using a psychophysical approach and also investigates the less explored area of the influence of blur on ocular discomfort. The specific aims of each chapter are: Chapter 2: To evaluate the difference thresholds of the central cornea in lens and non-lens wearers. Chapter 3: To devise a novel scale for ocular discomfort, relating subjective estimation of discomfort arising from contact lens wear to discomfort produced by the pneumatic stimuli delivered by a modified Belmonte esthesiometer. Chapter 4: To evaluate the influence of blur on ocular comfort while systematically manipulating vision using habitual refractive correction, induced spatial and optical blur, and under the absence of visual structure. Chapter 5: To examine if subjects rate discomfort and intensity of suprathreshold pneumatic stimuli differently when viewing clear and defocused targets and to examine the suprathreshold scaling of stimuli under the same visual conditions. Methods Chapter 2: The mechanical sensitivity of the central cornea was determined in 12 lens wearers and 12 non-lens wearers using a modified Belmonte pneumatic esthesiometer. The mechanical threshold of the central cornea was first estimated using the method of limits. Then, a series of systematically increasing stimuli were presented, with the first stimuli being 25% less than the threshold. The subjects were asked to compare the intensity of each stimulus with the preceding one and report if any difference in intensity was detectable. The intensities at which the subjects perceived an increased intensity from the previous was recorded. The difference threshold (DL) was the differences between the stimulus intensities at which an increase was perceived and five DLs were measured for each subject. Weber’s constants that relate the size of the difference thresholds to the stimulus intensity were derived for each DL level and repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the Weber’s constants in the lens and non-lens wearing groups. Chapter 3: Twenty seven participants were enrolled for this magnitude matching study. Soft (HEMA) contact lenses of eight different lens designs varying in base curve and diameter were fit on all participants. The study was conducted on two separate days with four lenses randomly assigned on each day. The assigned soft contact lens was placed on the chosen eye and the sensations were measured using a numerical rating scale. Following this, the subjects were asked to regulate the intensity of the pneumatic stimulus using the control dial in order to match the discomfort from the stimulus to the discomfort from contact lens wear. At the completion of magnitude matching, ratings of sensations were again recorded. Pearson product moment correlation was used to correlate the objective esthesiometer matches to the subjective ratings of discomfort reported by each participant. The method of least log squares was used to derive the power exponents as defined by Stevens’ power law and analyze the psychophysical functions. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to investigate the effect of lens sequence and session on ocular discomfort with contact lens wear. The impact of lens type and time on discomfort was studied using linear mixed modeling. Chapter 4: Twenty emmetropic subjects rated ocular comfort, vision and sensation attributes (burning, itching and warmth) under conditions of normal vision, spatial blur and dioptric defocus, each session lasting for five minutes. Subjects viewed digital targets projected from a distance of 3m, and ocular surface sensations, vision were rated using magnitude estimation. Dioptric defocus was produced using +6.00DS contact lenses and equivalent spatial blur was created by spatially blurring the targets. Clear target images were used during dioptric defocus and blurred images during spatial blur session. Comfort was also rated under the absence of visual structure in fifteen of the participants using a ganzfeld and black occluders. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare vision and comfort ratings between the different experimental conditions. Chapter 5: Twenty one participants were enrolled. Ocular discomfort was produced by delivering mechanical stimuli from a pneumatic esthesiometer, and participants were asked to rate the intensity of stimulus and the discomfort induced by it under clear and defocused visual conditions. Esthesiometry was performed on one eye while the fellow eye viewed either a clear or blurred 6/60 fixation target through a trial lens. For the clear visual condition, the trial lens contained +0.25DS over their distance refractive correction and for the defocused condition, an additional +4.00DS was used. Mechanical thresholds from the central cornea were estimated using ascending methods of limits and then stimuli that were 25%, 50%, 75% and 100 % above threshold were presented in random order. Participants rated intensity and discomfort of each stimulus using a 0-100 numerical scale where 0 indicated no sensation and 100 indicated highest imaginable intensity/discomfort. There were 3 sessions with clear visual conditions and 3 sessions with defocus, in random order. Results Chapter 2: The functions relating Weber’s constants to stimulus intensities were slightly different in lens and non-lens wearing groups, although the absolute thresholds were similar. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of DL level on Weber’s constant (p<0.001), with the Weber’s fraction at the first DL being higher than the following DLs. A significant main effect of the group type was also observed, with the lens wearers showing higher Weber’s constants than the non-lens wearers (p=0.02) However, there was no interaction between DL level and lens wearing group on Weber’s constants (p=0.38). Chapter 3: The average and individual psychophysical functions appeared to follow Stevens’ power function, with mechanical and chemical stimuli giving rise to different power exponents. Examination of the individual transducer functions revealed that only about half of the subjects were able to match the contact lens sensations to the pneumatic stimulus discomfort, with both mechanical and chemical stimulation. The lens types did not have any impact (p=0.65) on the session or sequence in which the lens was presented, although an effect of session and sequence on discomfort was observed. The average discomfort ratings produced by the different lens types were similar. There appeared to be significant effects of time (p<0.001) on the reporting of discomfort with lens wear, with the discomfort upon lens insertion rated to be higher than after lenses settling. Chapter 4: Ratings of vision under spatial blur and dioptric defocus were significantly different (p<0.001) from normal vision condition. Vision with dioptric defocus was rated worse (p<0.001) than spatial blur. Significant differences in comfort were observed between normal vision and blur, including spatial blur (p=0.02) and dioptric defocus (p=0.001). However, there was no significant difference (p=0.99) in comfort between spatial blur and dioptric defocus. Comfort remained unchanged between normal vision, occluders and ganzfeld although vision was absent in the later two conditions. Chapter 5: There was no significant difference in mechanical thresholds under clear and defocused conditions with a paired t-test (p=0.66) and similar results were obtained with repeated measures ANOVA, with no significant difference in discomfort (p=0.10) and intensity (p=0.075) ratings between the two visual conditions. However, paired t-test between the derived exponents under clear and defocused conditions showed significant differences for discomfort (p=0.05) and no significant difference for the ratings of intensity (p=0.22). Comparison of exponents between discomfort and intensity showed a significant difference in both clear (p=0.02) and defocus conditions (p<0.001). Conclusions: Chapter 2: The differential sensitivity of the ocular surface can be successfully measured with a pneumatic esthesiometer and it appears that Weber’s law holds true for corneal nociceptive sensory processing. There are subtle differences in mechanical difference thresholds between lens and non-lens wearers suggesting the possibility of different neural activity levels in the two groups. Chapter 3: Subjective ratings of discomfort can be scaled by corneal esthesiometry in a selective group of people. In the subset of subjects with poorer correlations, perhaps the pneumatic mechanical stimulus was too localized and specific to match the complex sensations experienced while wearing contact lenses. However, there is also a group of subjects who are poor at making judgments about ocular comfort. Hence, the use of special sensory panels should be considered when ocular comfort is the primary outcome. Chapter 4: There does seem to be an association between clarity of vision and ocular comfort, although the pathways for pain and vision are perhaps exclusive. Interactions between vision and other senses have been reported, but a similar inter-sensory interaction between pain and vision is yet to be clearly demonstrated. The decreased comfort observed in this study might perhaps be due to nocebo or Hawthorne effects. Chapter 5: Suprathreshold scaling of pneumatic stimuli can vary with the viewing conditions, with defocus associated with higher exponents than clear visual conditions. However, the ratings of comfort appear to be similar under both the conditions. If defocus does affect comfort, it is subtle and does not affect the sensory components, but tiny effects through the affective aspect of pain can contribute to the differences in power exponents. The differences in the perception of comfort do not appear to be attributable to the differences in threshold or sensory intensity.

This thesis describes advanced modeling of nanoscale bulk MOSFETs incorporating critical quantum mechanical effects such as gate direct tunneling and energy quantization of carriers. An explicit expression of gate direct tunneling for thin gate oxides has been developed by solving the Schroinger equation analytically. In addition, the impact of different gate electrode as well as gate insulation materials on the gate direct tunneling is explored. This results in an analytical estimation of the potential solutions to excessive gate leakage current. The energy quantization analysis involves the derivation of a quantum mechanical charge distribution model by solving the coupled Poisson and Schroinger equations. Based on the newly developed charge distribution model, threshold voltage and subthreshold swing models are obtained. A transregional drain current model which takes into account the quantum mechanical correction on device parameters is derived. Results from this model show good agreement with numeric simulation results of both long-channel and short-channel MOSFETs.The models derived here are used to project MOSFET scaling limits. Tunneling and quantization effects cause large power dissipation, low drive current, and strong sensitivities to process variation, which greatly limit CMOS scaling. Developing new materials and structures is imminent to extend the scaling process.

This thesis details an innovative laser diode packaging method to improve the accuracy of the laser locator by modifying the location method and packaging process. This method features its simplicity in the packaging process, the capability in tweaking the rotary angle of the laser diode, and an effective solution to the scaling effect as well as the enhancement in yield. The gripping micro-unit,consisting of a refined micro gripper together with the piezoelectric actuator and coupler,integrates a self-designed rotary adjustment and release unit to enable the micro-rectangle unit such as a laser unit to fine tune the location of the object. It works with the linear stage, platform, and image acquisition system to become the core of the proposed location system. A series of experiments are designed to verify the functionality. A precise linear stage without the rotary axis is applied to control the locator,adjust the location of the laser, and minimize the error from equipment. The result demonstrates its feasibility.

Consider a cognitive overlaid network (CON) that has two tiers with different priorities: a primary tier vs. a secondary tier, which is an emerging network scenario with the advancement of cognitive radio (CR) technologies. The primary tier consists of randomly distributed primary radios (PRs) of density n, which have an absolute priority to access the spectrum. The secondary tier consists of randomly distributed CRs of density m = n^y with y greater than or equal to 1, which can only access the spectrum opportunistically to limit the interference to PRs. In this dissertation, the fundamental limits of such a network are investigated in terms of the asymptotic throughput and packet delay performance when m and n approaches infinity. The following two types of CONs are considered: 1) selfish CONs, in which neither the primary tier nor the secondary tier is willing to route the packets for the other, and 2) supportive CONs, in which the secondary tier is willing to route the packets for the primary tier while the primary tier does not. It is shown that in selfish CONs, both tiers can achieve the same throughput and delay scaling laws as a stand-alone network. In supportive CONs, the throughput and delay scaling laws of the primary tier could be significantly improved with the aid of the secondary tier, while the secondary tier can still achieve the same throughput and delay scaling laws as a stand-alone network. Finally, the throughput and packet delay of a CON with a small number of nodes are investigated. Specifically, we investigate the power and rate control schemes for multiple CR links in the same neighborhood, which operate over multiple channels (frequency bands) in the presence of PRs with a delay constraint imposed on data transmission. By further considering practical limitations in spectrum sensing, an efficient algorithm is proposed to maximize the average sum-rate of the CR links over a finite time horizon under the constraints on the CR-to-PR interference and the average transmit power for each CR link. In the proposed algorithm, the PR occupancy of each channel is modeled as a discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC). Based on such a model, a novel power and rate control strategy based on dynamic programming (DP) is derived, which is a function of the spectrum sensing output, the instantaneous channel gains for the CR links, and the remaining power budget for the CR transmitter. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm leads to a significant performance improvement over heuristic algorithms.