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This thesis is based upon ethnographic field research conducted in and around the predominantly Māori-populated town of Ruatoria; a small rural settlement situated in the sparsely inhabited heartland of the iwi (tribe), Ngāti Porou, on the east coast of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s North Island. The thesis investigates the apparent paradox concerning how and why the Jamaican Rastafari movement appeals to, and has invigorated, rather than obliterated the Māoritanga (Māori culture) of a group of Ngāti Porou who self-identify as ‘The Dread’. Thus far, anthropological analyses of the Rastafari movement have tended to characterise its manifestation as a religion of protest, a religion of resistance or a religion of the post-colonially oppressed. In this thesis I destabilise such interpretations by demonstrating that we can best understand The Dread’s assimilation of Rastafari through their articulation of aspects of Māori cosmology charged with promoting communion with God, gods and ancestors. Theoretically, this thesis combines traditional ethnographic explorations of hierarchy, identity, myth and comparative Rastafari, with more recent approaches to the anthropological study of ontology, cosmology, human-ancestor and human-environment relations. I also consider key methodological implications that attention to the latter analytical approaches ensue. By situating my analysis of The Dread’s articulation of cosmology and mythic narrative at the interface of ontology and agency, I tease out what I term the ‘divergent mono-ontological perspectives’ that emanate from disagreements between the primordial siblings over whether to instigate the creation of the cosmos and individuation through an act of rupture, or to remain united within the original cosmogonic whole. As the first ethnographic study to locate an occurrence of Rastafari discourse within an ontological context, this thesis contributes to the literature on Māori cosmology by elucidating the mediation of tensions between autonomy and unity thatcontinues to inform intra-tribal relational dynamics in the Māori present.

In this thesis we study the essential spectrum of composition operators on the Hardy space of the unit disc and of the upper half-plane. Our starting point is the spectral analysis of the composition operators induced by translations of the upper half-plane. We completely characterize the essential spectrum of a class of composition operators that are induced by perturbations of translations

In this study, we investigate several facets of a due-date quotation problem and develop a model considering jointly due-date quotation, order acceptance and base-stock decisions in a hybrid make-to-stock (MTS) / make-to-order (MTO) and multi-class system with lead time sensitive Poisson demand and exponentially distributed service times. We seek to maximize profit considering lateness penalties and holding costs in the model. We consider three alternative due-date quotation policies each having different properties in terms of due-date flexibility as well as the utilization of state information. In order to evaluate the value of due-date flexibility as well as state information, the performances of the optimal policy and alternative policies are evaluated for various performance measures under different operating conditions. We also discuss the benefit of joint pooling of inventory and capacity under optimal policy and an accept-all policy.

The generalized moment of order k of a mass distribution sigma for a natural number k is given by integral of lambda to the power k with respect to mass distribution sigma and variable lambda. In extended moment problem, given a sequence of real numbers, it is required to find a mass distribution whose generalized moment of order k is k&#039 / th term of the sequence. The conditions of existence and uniqueness of the solution obtained by Hamburger are studied in this thesis by the use of orthogonal polynomials determined by a measure on real line. A chapter on the study of asymptotic behaviour of orthogonal functions on compact subsets of complex numbers is also included.

Existence of basis in locally convex space has been an important problem in functional analysis for more than 40 years. In this thesis the conditions for the existence of basis are examined. These thesis consist of three parts. The first part is about the exterior interpolative conditions. The second part deals with the inner interpolative conditions on nuclear frechet space. These are sufficient conditions on existence of basis. In the last part, it is shown that for a regular nuclear K&ouml / the space the inner interpolative conditions are satisfied and moreover another type of inner interpolative conditions are introduced.

In the electronics the quality, reliability, operational speed, device density and cost of circuits are fundamentally determined by carriers. If it is necessary to use better material than plastic carrier, it has to be made of ceramics or glass-ceramics. This study dealt with the ceramic based carrier production system. The types of the raw ceramics fired at low temperature (below 1000&deg / C) are called Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramics (LTCC). In this study, a comprehensive thermal model is described for the high temperature oven which belongs to a Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC) substance production line. The model includes detailed energy balances with conduction, convection and radiation heat transfer mechanisms, view factor derivations for the radiative terms, thermocouple balances, heating filaments and cooling mechanisms for the system. Research was conducted mainly on process development and production conditions along with the system modeling of oven. Temperature control was made in high temperature co-firing oven. Radiation View Factors for substrate and thermocouples are determined. View factors between substrate and top-bottom-sides of the oven are calculated, and then inserted into the energy balances. The same arrangement was made for 3 thermocouples at the bottom of the oven. Combination of both expressions gave the final model. Modeling studies were held with energy balance simulations on MATLAB. Data analysis and DOE study were held with JMP Software.

In this study, we consider the Air Cargo Scheduling Problem based on a real life application. The aim is to move cargo and passengers that have different priorities and delivery time window, from a number of origin airports to destination airports by means of a transportation system. The system has predefined carrier routes and a heterogeneous fleet of aircraft. The problem is formulated as a heterogeneous vehicle, multi commodity, pick-up, and delivery network flow problem with a large set of system specific constraints. The proposed model determines set of movement requirements assigned on each route leg and number and type of aircraft assigned for each route in a reasonable amount of time. The model is tested with the real and generated data and the results are compared with the current methodology under different scenarios. The model produced better results in a short amount of time compared to the current methodology.

We consider a hierarchical maximal covering location problem to locate p health centers and q hospitals in such a way that maximum demand is covered, where health centers and hospitals have successively inclusive hierarchy. Demands are 3 types: demand requiring low-level service only, demand requiring high-level service only, and demand requiring both levels of service at the same time. All types of requirements of a demand point should be either covered by hospital providing both levels of service or referred to hospital via health center since a demand point is not covered unless all levels of requirements are satisfied. Thus, a health center cannot be opened unless it is suitable to refer its covered demand to a hospital. Referral is defined as coverage of health centers by hospitals. We also added partial coverage to this complex hierarchic structure, that is, a demand point is fully covered up to the minimum critical distance, non-covered after the maximum critical distance and covered with a decreasing quality while increasing distance to the facility between minimum and maximum critical distances. We developed an MIP formulation to solve the Hierarchical Maximal Covering Location Problem with referral in the presence of partial coverage. We solved small-size problems optimally using GAMS. For large-size problems we developed a Genetic Algorithm that gives near-optimal results quickly. We tested our Genetic Algorithm on randomly generated problems of sizes up to 1000 nodes.