The changes in plant quality and availability in space and time present a substantial problem to mammalian herbivores. As a result, these herbivores need to alter their foraging behaviour to maximize their energy gain at both small (plant level) and large (landscape level) scales. A megaherbivore, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana), has been shown to be selective in its foraging choices at both of these scales. Furthermore, the ratio of palatability:defences (e.g. fibre and total polyphenols) has been highlighted as an important determinant of habitat selection in elephants. The elephants in Ithala Game Reserve (IGR) frequently leave IGR during the wet season and forage outside the reserve. However, they predominantly feed on the low-nutrient granite soils of the reserve and return to a high-nutrient area with dolerite soils during the dry season. In an attempt to understand these seasonal movements, I focused on how the small-scale foraging decisions of the elephants lead to large-scale seasonal movements in IGR, KwaZulu-Natal. Plant availability was determined seasonally for seven target species across four areas in the reserve. Crude protein, fibre, energy and total polyphenols as well as the ratios of palatability:digestion-reducing substances were analysed in the wet and dry seasons. All factors and their interactions were significant in a MANOVA. Consequently, I employed a dimension-reducing Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to better understand the factors of greatest importance. The PCA highlighted four of the six most important factors to be the ratios of palatability:digestion-reducing substances. The other two important variables were total polyphenols (negative effect) and crude protein (positive effect). At small spatial scales, I found that the elephants were selective in their decisions, especially during the dry season. For example, the increased inclusion of the principal tree species Acacia nilotica from 2.9% in the wet season to 39.3% during the dry season appears to be a result of a decline in total polyphenols and fibre during the dry season. At large spatial scales, the elephants moved back into IGR from the low-nutrient granite soils in the east in response to an increase in forage quality in the west as the quality declined in the east at the same time. However, it is unclear as to why the elephants are leaving the reserve during the wet season. Some possible explanations for this are discussed.Key-words: acid detergent fibre, crude protein, Loxodonta africana, neutral detergent fibre, total polyphenols, plant part quality. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Search engines of today are focusing on efficiently and accurately generating search results.Yet, there is much to be explored in the way people interact with the applications and relate to the content. Individuals are commonly unique, with complex preferences, motives and expectations. Not only is it important to be sensitive to these differences, but to accommodate the extremes. Enhancing a search engine does not only rely on technological development, but to explore potential user experiences in broader perspectives - which not only gratifies the needs for information, but supports a diversity of journeys. The aim of the project is to develop an alternate search engine with different functionality based on new values that reflects contemporary needs. The result, Exposeek, is an experiential prototype supporting exploratory browsing based on principles of distributed infrastructure, transparent computation and serendipitous information. Suggestive queries, legible algorithms and augmented results provide additional insights and present an alternative way to seek and peruse the Web. / Search Engines, Interaction Design

Relative Debugging is a paradigm that assists users to locate errors in programs that have been corrected or enhanced. In particular, the contents of key data structures in the development version are compared with the contents of the corresponding data structures, in an existing version, as the two programs execute. If the values of two corresponding data structures differ at points where they should not, an error may exist and the user is notified. Relative Debugging requires users to identify the corresponding data structures within the two programs, and the locations at which the comparisons should be performed. To quickly and effectively identify useful data structures and comparison points requires that users have a detailed knowledge of the two programs under consideration. Without a detailed knowledge of the two programs, the task of locating useful data structures and comparison points can quickly become a difficult and time consuming process. Prior to the research detailed in this thesis, the Relative Debugging paradigm did not provide any assistance that allowed users to quickly and effectively identify suitable data structures and program points that will help discover the source of an error. Our research efforts have been directed at enhancing the Relative Debugging paradigm. The outcome of this research is the discovery of techniques that empower Relative Debugging users to become more productive and allow the Relative Debugging paradigm to be significantly enhanced. Specifically, the research has resulted in the following three contributions: 1. A Systematic Approach to Relative Debugging. 2. Data Flow Browsing for Relative Debugging. 3. Automatic Relative Debugging. These contributions have enhanced the Relative Debugging paradigm and allow errors to be localized with little human interaction. Minimizing the user's involvement reduces the cost of debugging programs that have been corrected or enhanced, and has a significant impact on current debugging practices.

Diss. (sammanfattning). Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2003. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2006. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-56). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Mar. 27, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

This study examined the context of browsing behaviors. According to uses-and gratifications approach, the motives of World Wide Web (mentioned as WWW later) generate the expectations of the WWW and other sources, which lead to differential patterns of browsing behaviors. On-line facus groups were performed three times in Decemember 1999 and January 2000. The criterion used when we choose the respondents of the focus group is that they should have experienced in Internet at least one year. The purpose of the focus groups is to explore the context of browsing. In addition, an on-line survey was undertaken on http://www.k4.com.tw and http://www.moex.gov.tw. The session of http://www.k4.com.tw is from March 25, 2000 to April 20, 2000, and the session of http://www.moex.gov.tw is from April 11, 2000 to April 12, 2000. The primary purpose of the survey was to test hypotheses related to browsing motives, browsing strategy motives, and browsing activities. This study found that surfers were segmented into four groups accoring to the motives of WWW: ritualistic dominant motives, instrumental dominant motives, high motives, and low motives. Besides, the motives of browsing strategies were probed in this study. Six factors of the motives of browsing strategies were extracted: to increase data completeness, to help awareness of site options, to avoid site redundancy or information duplicate, job factor, no scare at the loss in cyberspace, and to kill time in a high-speed or favorable site. These factors co-operated with browsing skills explaining medium to low variance of the browsing behaviors.

Dada uma biblioteca com milhares de vídeos de histeroscopias diagnósticas, sobre a qual deseja-se realizar consultas como "retornar imagens contendo miomas submucosos" ou "recuperar imagens cujo diagnóstico é pólipo endometrial". Este é o contexto deste trabalho. Vídeos de histeroscopias diagnósticas são usados para avaliar a aparência do útero e são importantes não só para propósitos de diagnóstico de doenças mas também em estudos científicos em áreas da medicina, como reprodução humana e estudos sobre fertilidade. Estes vídeos contêm uma grande quantidade de informação, porém somente um número reduzido de quadros são úteis para propósitos de diagnósticos e/ou prognósticos. Esta tese apresenta um método para identificar automaticamente a informação relevante em vídeos de histeroscopias diagnósticas, criando um sumário do vídeo. Propõe-se uma representação hierárquica do conteúdo destes vídeos que é baseada no rastreamento de pontos geometricamente consistentes através da seqüência dos quadros. Demonstra-se que esta representação é uma maneira útil de organizar o conteúdo de vídeos de histeroscopias diagnósticas, permitindo que especialistas possam realizar atividades de browsing de uma forma rápida e sem introduzir informações espúrias no sumário do vídeo. Os experimentos indicam que o método proposto produz sumários compactos (com taxas de redução de dados em torno de 97.5%) sem descartar informações clinicamente relevantes. / Given a library containing thousands of diagnostic hysteroscopy videos, which are only indexed according to a patient ID and the exam date. Usually, users browse through this library in order to obtain answers to queries like retrieve images of submucosal myomas or recover images whose diagnosis is endometrial polyp. This is the context of this work. Specialists have been used diagnostic hysteroscopy videos to inspect the uterus appearance, once the images are important for diagnosis purposes as well as in medical research fields like human reproduction. These videos contain lots of information, but only a reduced number of frames are actually useful for diagnosis/prognosis purposes. This thesis proposes a technique to identify clinically relevant information in diagnostic hysteroscopy videos, creating a rich video summary. We propose a hierarchical representation based on a robust tracking of image points through the frame sequence. We demonstrate this representation is a helpful way to organize the hysteroscopy video content, allowing specialists to perform fast browsing without introducing spurious information in the video summary. The experimental results indicate that the method produces compact video summaries (data-rate reduction around 97.5%) without discarding clinically relevant information.

For several decades, Moose population (Alces alces) in Sweden has been growing considerably. This increase has resulted in a greater impact and damage in trees, especially in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) which is the basis of Swedish forestry and, therefore the economical losses are considerable. For this reason, for several years, to know Moose feeding behaviour and to look for measures to reduce it is impact on forestry have marked the guidelines of research. The Moose damages the pine mainly in winter, when there are no herbaceous plants and deciduous trees to eat. This project has focused on reducing the moose damage from a biodiversity point of view, following a line similar to the "Optimal forage theory". According to this theory, a moose selects the food according to the composition and the richness of the species. Results have conducted to relation plant-richness with Moose Browsing Damage on Scots pine and with more abundance of trees around a Scots pine, Moose Browsing Damage decreases considerably. In this project I also study the association between Moose activity and the plant-richness. Both (Moose Browsing damage on Scots pine and Moose activity) were tested with Shannon´s and Simpson´s index, two biodiversity indexes. The amount of different plants species nearby a Scots pine were measured and studied, as well. Also, I did the Pearson´s coefficient as an initial relationship between the variables (and observed if it is negative or positive) and ANOVA analysis. Although the conclusions weren´t as clear as I expected, in my opinion this study offered another tool to reduce the before mentioned impact.