The complexity of urban areas within the mosaic of private and public vegetation has led communities to enact regulations to manage numerous benefits of urban vegetation. As urban populations continue to increase, regulations for governing vegetation becomes increasingly common. This study examined the variation in trends, structure, language, clauses, and provisions of vegetation ordinances within communities across the Southern United States. Qualitative content analysis using NVivo computer software was used for analyzing ordinances collected from Municode. Several discrepancies and similarities were explored in ordinance structure and content, along with problems such as lack of effective ordinance components (enforcement and severability provisions), unclear goals, unclear provisions, inadequate information, duplications, section contradictions, and misspellings. Findings will guide urban foresters, arborists, planners, and elected officials while developing new codes and suggest a need to draft better ordinances and revise problematic ones to increase positive impacts on the community green infrastructure.

[pt] A grande maioria dos dados que se encontram hoje na Web não estão preparados para a Web Semântica. Para facilitar e promover a conversão de dados, armazenados em bancos de dados relacionais e planilhas em particular, nós introduzimos a abordagem do Babel. Diferentemente das abordagens existentes, nomeadamente RDB2RDF, Babel e promove a conversão de dados em uma ampla variedade de formatos, que incluem OWL, RDFa, RSS e (X)HTML, além de RDF. A principal contribuição de Babel, no entanto, é sua facilidade de uso. Babel suaviza a curva de aprendizado, eliminando a necessidade de se familiarizar com técnicas de mapeamento complexas, que são substituídas pelo uso de templates. / [en] The vast majority of data on the Web today is not Semantic Web ready. To facilitate and promote the conversion of data, stored in relational databases and spreadsheets in particular, we introduce the Babel approach. Differently from existing approaches, notably RDBtoRDF, Babel outputs data in a wider range of formats, that include OWL, RDFa, RSS and (X)HTML, in addition to RDF. The main contribution of Babel, however, is its ease of use. Babel smoothes the learning curve by altogether eliminating the need of getting acquainted with complex mapping techniques, that are substituted by the use of templates.

[pt] A apresentação de aplicações hipermídia dinâmicas pode ser vista em alguns casos como um processo de autoria recursivo, no qual aplicações são recriadas em tempo de apresentação quando modificações no conteúdo são desencadeadas por interações entre a máquina de apresentação e outras entidades (tais como usuários, objetos imperativos, aplicações externas etc.). Em alguns cenários de aplicações hipermídia dinâmicas, é possível identificar um padrão de composição hipermídia que se mantém mesmo após o documento ter sido recriado. Aplicações desse tipo são comuns, por exemplo, em um ambiente de TV Digital Interativa. A existência de um padrão durante a apresentação de uma aplicação para TV Digital Interativa permite estabelecer uma analogia entre os processos de recriar documentos dinamicamente e de especificar aplicações pelo método orientado a templates. Nesse último método, o autor especifica uma aplicação preenchendo lacunas deixadas por um template que representa o padrão de composição hipermídia da aplicação. Analogamente, na recriação dinâmica de documentos o módulo que processa atualizações no documento faz o papel de preencher as lacunas de templates. O objetivo principal do presente trabalho é definir uma arquitetura, inspirada nessa analogia, para estruturar aplicações NCL que podem ser refatoradas dinamicamente e que se mantêm em conformidade com seus respectivos templates. Nested Context Language (NCL) é a linguagem para autoria de aplicações do Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital terrestre. Para validar a solução proposta, foram desenvolvidas uma aplicação que captura um cenário real de uso e uma ferramenta de autoria que permite especificar graficamente o preenchimento de templates. / [en] The presentation of dynamic hypermedia applications may be seen as a recursive authoring process, in which applications are recreated during presentation time, whenever content changes are triggered by interactions between the presentation engine and other entities such as users, imperative objects, external applications, etc. In some scenarios of dynamic hypermedia applications, it is possible to identify a hypermedia composition pattern that remains consistent even after the document is recreated. This kind of applications is common, for instance, in an Interactive Digital Television environment. The presence of such a pattern throughout the presentation of an application for Interactive Digital Television allows the establishment of an analogy between recreating documents dynamically and authoring applications through a template-driven authoring method. Using the latter, the authoring process is conducted by filling gaps left by a template that represents the hypermedia composition pattern of an application. Analogously, in the dynamic document re-creation, the module that processes document updates fulfills the role of filling the templates gaps. The main goal of the present work is to define an architecture, inspired by this analogy, to structure NCL applications that can be dynamically refactored and that remain conform to their respective templates. Nested Context Language (NCL) is the language of Brazilian System of Digital Terrestrial Television applications. In order to validate the proposal, an application that captures a real scenario and an authoring tool for specify graphically document filling was developed.

Compact binary coalescing systems: binary neutron stars, neutron star black hole pairs and binary black hole systems, represent promising candidates for gravitational wave first detection and have the potential to provide precise tests of the strong-field predictions of general relativity. Observations of binary black hole (BBH) systems will provide a wealth of information relevant to fundamental physics, astrophysics and cosmology. The search for such systems is a major priority of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo collaborations. A major area of research within LIGO-Virgo analysis groups is incorporation of spin into the search template banks used for binary black hole systems. In this dissertation, I compare the injection efficiency and parameter recovery from three binary black hole searches. One of the searches presented here uses non-spinning templates and represents the standard LIGO search for binary black holes with total masses between 35 and 100M[circle with dot]. The other two use spin aligned and anti-aligned templates representing a future search for black hole binary systems with total masses between 35-100M[circle with dot]. One of the two spinning searches has the spin parameter set to zero, nonspinning, as a check of the spinning method. (Additionally the (anti-)aligned spin searches use a retooling of the standard pipeline taking advantage of a code base designed specifically to handle Advanced LIGO data.) All three searches were run on artificial data created by the Numerical Injection Analysis 2 collaboration (NINJA2) containing Gaussian noise and numerically generated signals modeling aligned and anti-aligned spinning binary black holes. I found that for the analyzed two weeks of data the three searches recover injections with nearly equal efficiency; however, the spinning search recovers the parameters of the injections more accurately than the non-spinning search. Specifically, the parameter recovery of the spins shows a correlation between the injected and recovered spins, and the addition of spin to the template bank improves the recovery of the signal-to-noise ratio and the chirp mass for an injected signal. While spin aligned situations are geometrically low probability configurations, there are plausible astrophysical effects that lead to alignment of spins prior to merger. Therefore my results show that the spin-aligned template bank search represents an improvement on the standard non-spinning search in the highmass region and should be pursued on real data. / text

A lot of research is done in requirements engineering and testing but often the extensive literature is missing on defining good methods for linking functional requirements with test cases. Most of the delays occurring in the software development projects are because of incomplete or inaccurate functional requirements. The two main goals of our project are to achieve a successful software project by First, to design a template, which will merge functional requirements with test cases and second is to find the benefits of the aligning requirements to test cases. Changing, updating and tracing the requirements during the development of the project is not an easy task. The main reason for project failure is due to possibility of not fulfilling specified project requirements, so one way to solve this problem is to merge functional requirements with test cases. Thus removes the need of creating a separate requirements document, which will improve the traceability process between requirements and testing, thus leads to high quality and efficient development. The template helps us to drive a successful project by identifying the issues at an earlier stage of the development cycle.

Submitted by Rosa Assis (rosa_assis@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-11-21T15:01:03Z No. of bitstreams: 2 ZORANDIR SOARES JUNIOR.pdf: 776451 bytes, checksum: 0df63868dba162f16d377cf8ba51839a (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Paola Damato (repositorio@mackenzie.br) on 2017-11-30T12:39:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 ZORANDIR SOARES JUNIOR.pdf: 776451 bytes, checksum: 0df63868dba162f16d377cf8ba51839a (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-30T12:39:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 ZORANDIR SOARES JUNIOR.pdf: 776451 bytes, checksum: 0df63868dba162f16d377cf8ba51839a (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / Templates are formal representations for sets of one-dimensional cellular automata created by means of a generalisation of the classical state transition tables. Algorithms already do exist in the literature that generate templates for static properties of cellular automata rules, as well as others that perform operations such as intersection between templates and template expansion. Here, we introduce the exception template operation, the operation of di erence between templates, and explain the functioning of the algorithm of those operations, which have been implemented in the CATemplates package of the Mathematica software. We also discuss the possibility of using templates in the context of the parity problem {namely, the determination of the parity of 1s in a cyclic binary con guration of odd length{ with the support of the operation of di erence between templates, and of the template generation of parity conserving and state conserving cellular automata. / Templates são representações formais para conjuntos de autômatos celulares unidimensionais feitas por meio da generalização das tabelas de transição clássicas. Já existem algoritmos na literatura que geram templates para propriedades estáticas de autômatos celulares, assim como há algoritmos que realizam operações como intersecção entre templates e expansão de template. Aqui, é introduzida a operação de templates de exceção, a operação de diferença entre templates, e explica-se o funcionamento do algoritmo dessas operações, que foram implementadas na biblioteca CATemplates do software Mathematica. Também discutimos a possibilidade de uso de templates no contexto do problema de paridade (a saber, a determinação da paridade de 1s em uma configuração binária cíclica de tamanho ímpar), com o apoio da operação de diferença entre templates, e das operações geradoras de templates de autômatos celulares conservativos de paridade e conservativos de estado.

In this dissertation, GaN growth on porous templates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) was studied. The motivation of this research is pursuing an effective reduction of defects in GaN by its submicron-scale and nano-scale epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) on these porous templates, which included porous TiN/GaN (P-TiN), imprint lithography patterned Ti/GaN (IL-Ti), carbon-face nano-porous SiC (C-PSC), and silicon-face nano-porous SiC (Si-PSC). The porous TiN/GaN was formed in situ in MOCVD reactor by annealing a Ti-covered GaN seed layer. This simplicity makes the GaN ELO on the P-TiN more cost-efficient than the conventional ELO which requires ex situ photolithography and/or etching. Both the GaN nano-ELO and the GaN micron-ELO could be realized on P-TiN by controlling the GaN nucleation scheme. The reduction efficacy of edge threading dislocation (TD) was ~15 times. The optical characterization indicated that the non-radiative point-defects in GaN grown were reduced significantly on the P-TiN.The imprint lithography patterned Ti/GaN had uniformly distributed submicron Ti pads on GaN seed layer. These Ti pads acted as GaN ELO masks. The TD reduction efficacy of the IL-Ti was only ~2 due to the low coverage of Ti (~25%) on the GaN seed layer and the low pressure (30 Torr) employed during GaN ELO. Even with a small reduction of TDs, the point-defects in GaN were effectively lowered by the IL-Ti. Hydrogen polishing, sacrificial oxidation, and chemical mechanical polishing were employed to remove surface damage on the PSC substrates. Nitrogen-polarity GaN grown on the C-PSC was highly dislocated because the rough surface of C-PSC induced strong misorientation between GaN nucleation islands. The efficacy of Si-PSC on defect reduction primarily depended on the GaN nucleation schemes. A high density of GaN nano-nucleation-islands was required to realize the GaN nano-ELO extensively. With such a nucleation scheme, the GaN grown on Si-PSC had a ~20 times reduction on the density of the mixed and screw TDs compared with control sample. This growth method is promising for effective defect reduction within a small GaN thickness. Reducing the GaN nucleation density further lowered the TD density but also diminished the efficacy of Si-PSC. These results were explained by a growth model based on the mosaic structure of GaN.

Hierarchical materials offer great promise for high-performance sensors and catalysis carriers. Well-defined hierarchically porous materials are promising candidates for a wide range of applications relating to biosensors, separations, drug delivery, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), etc. Research on synthetic methodologies is expanding. However, fabrication of hierarchical porous structures with tunable pore dimension and shape, controllable pore distribution and interconnectivity is still a challenging task in materials science. One of the main tasks of this work is to establish a facile and reliable approach of making well-defined hierarchically porous materials. Then, based on those multimodal porous structures, different functions and applications can be realized. This work utilizes a direct hard templating method to obtain hierarchical porous structures with a well-defined bimodal distribution of the pores based on hierarchical templates. The hierarchical templates were prepared by synthetically joining appropriately functionalized commercially available polystyrene (PS) latex spheres together. Two different coupling reactions were used to form the hierarchical templates: carbodiimide-assisted coupling of COOH groups with NH2 groups and base-assisted coupling of epoxy groups with NH2 groups. Two different morphologies of templates, "raspberry-like" and "strawberry-like" were made. The template can be defined by the sizes of both the "core" and the "satellite" spheres, and altering the coverage of "satellites" on the "core". The main advantage of this strategy is the tailorability of the size and shape of the hierarchical templates, which allows an easy and independent adjustment to the multiporosity of the material structure design. Also, the monodispersed hierarchical templates are constructed of only one material, can be isolated, and can be assembled using standard template packing procedures that have been used for unimodal porous material fabrication described in published literature. Based on the predefined monodispersed hierarchical templates, multimodal porous silica, bimodal porous gold film and porous capsules were fabricated in this work as representative 3D, 2D, and 0D hierarchical porous structures, respectively. Because the template was predefined as one whole body, the connectivity between the big pores and small pores is guaranteed. The way the templates are packed together on a surface also ensures connections between each "template-shaped pore cluster". The uniform interconnectivity and ordered arrangement among the pores allows the different modals of pores to communicate with each other. The different hierarchical porous materials made in this work were characterized with SEM, TEM, AFM, XPS, STEM, gas adsorption, and mercury intrusion porosity. The results indicate that the multimodal porous materials can be successfully fabricated using predefined hierarchical templates. The different arrangement (3D, 2D, 0D) of those templates and the independent tailorability of the pore sizes provide more flexibility and control on the hierarchical porous material fabrication. The main parts of this work are as follows: (1) Fabrication and characterization of morphology controllable hierarchical templates (2) Fabrication and characterization of various multimodal porous structures of different materials based on the obtained templates (3) Study of the application of hierarchical porous gold electrode obtained and (4) The comparison between conventional porous structures and hierarchical porous structures.

This thesis studies the requirements and processes involved in building an authentication system using the fingerprint biometric, where the fingerprint template is protected during storage and during comparison. The principles developed in this thesis can be easily extended to authentication systems using other biometric modalities. Most existing biometric authentication systems store their template securely using an encryption function. However, in order to perform matching, the enrolled template must be decrypted. It is at this point that the authentication system is most vulnerable as the entire enrolled template is exposed. A biometric is irreplaceable if compromised and can also reveal sensitive information about an individual. If biometric systems are taken up widely, the template could also be used as an individual's digital identifier. Compromise in that case, violates an individual's right to privacy as their transactions in all systems where they used that compromised biometric can be tracked. Therefore securing a biometric template during comparison as well as storage in an authentication system is imperative. Eight different fingerprint template representation techniques, where templates were treated as a set of elements derived from the locations and orientations of fingerprint minutiae, were studied. Four main steps to build any biometric based authentication system were identified and each of the eight fingerprint template representations was inducted through the four steps. Two distinct Error Tolerant Cryptographic Constructs based on the set difference metric, were studied for their ability to securely store and compare each of the template types in an authentication system. The first construct was found to be unsuitable for a fundamental reason that would apply to all the template types considered in the research. The second construct did not have the limitation of the first and three algorithms to build authentication systems using the second construct were proposed. It was determined that minutiae-based templates had significant intra sample variation as a result of which a very relaxed matching threshold had to be set in the authentication system. The relaxed threshold caused the authentication systems built using the first two algorithms to reveal enough information about the stored templates to render them insecure. It was found that in cases of such large intra-sample variation, a commonality based match decision was more appropriate. One solution to building a secure authentication system using minutiae-based templates was demonstrated by the third algorithm which used a two stage matching process involving the second cryptographic construct and a commonality based similarity measure in the two stages respectively. This implementation was successful in securing the fingerprint template during comparison as well as storage, with minimal reduction in accuracy when compared to the matching performance without the cryptographic construct. Another solution is to use an efficient commonality based error tolerant cryptographic construct. This thesis lists the desirable characteristics of such a construct as existence of any is unknown to date. This thesis concludes by presenting good guidelines to evaluate the suitability of different cryptographic constructs to protect biometric templates of other modalities in an authentication system.

<p>This master's thesis develops an algorithm for tracking of cars robust enough to handle turning cars. It is implemented in the image processing environment Image Processing Application Programming Interface (IPAPI) for use with the WITAS project. </p><p>Firstly, algorithms, comparable with one currently used in the WITAS-project, are studied. The focus is on how rotation, that originates from the turning of the cars, affects tracking performance. The algorithms studied all perform an exhaustive search over a region, close to the last known position of the object being tracked, to find a match. After this, an iterative algorithm, based on the idea that a car can only rotate, translate and change scale, is introduced. The algorithm estimates the parameters describing this rotation, translation, and change of scale, iteratively. The iterative process needs a initial parameter estimate that is accurate enough for the algorithm to converge. The developed algorithm is based on an earlier publication on the subject, however the mathematical description, and deduction, of it is taken one step further than in this publication. </p><p>The iterative algorithm used performs well under the assumption that the data used fulfills some basic criteria. These demands comprises: placement of camera, template size as well as how the parameters may vary between two observations. The iterative algorithm is also potentially faster than exhaustive search methods, because few iterations are needed when the parameters change slowly. Better initial parameters should improve stability and speed of convergation. Other suggestions that could give better performance is discussed, e.g., methods to better extract the target from the surroundings.</p>