Abstract Recent advances in wireless communications coupled with the widespread of bandwidthhungry and high-power consuming wireless services as well as the rapid penetration of multimedia-enabled smart handheld devices generate a drastic growth in mobile traffic volume. With these trends, the goals of 5G and beyond wireless communications include energy efficiency, low latency, and low service cost from the user’ perspective as well as spectrum efficiency, revenue increasing, and lower capital and operational cost from the network operators’ point of view. This thesis studies the potential of mobile clouds for improving energy, spectral, and cost efficiency towards the primary goals of 5G networks. Mobile clouds define a promising 5G integrated technology which combines the conventional cellular and shortrange networks into a novel and powerful communication architecture. Mobile clouds can be seen as a flexible and efficient platform for cooperative content delivery, cooperation, resource sharing, and social networks. Research work in this thesis is conducted in two main areas, namely fundamental and applied research on mobile clouds. Fundamental research focuses on cloud formation strategies and cloud maintenance mechanisms. In the applied area, the potential of mobile clouds for content distribution is investigated in both licensed and unlicensed bands. For content distribution using unlicensed band, several cooperative strategies are designed and their efficiency is compared to traditional multicast strategy in terms of energy efficiency, content distribution latency, and users’ quality of experience (QoE). In content distribution over licensed band, spectrum sharing and resource allocation algorithms are considered for multi pair and full-duplex device-to-device (D2D) communications, aiming at improving spectral efficiency and network performance as well as quality of service (QoS) provisioning. In addition, a business model is designed to consider how mobile clouds can reduce the cost of users and operators while improving revenue of operators and increasing users’ satisfaction. The results of this thesis show that mobile clouds technology creates a flexible and efficient platform which can efficiently enhance spectral efficiency, significantly improve energy efficiency and network performance while guaranteeing cost efficiency for users and network operators simultaneously. / Tiivistelmä Langattomassa viestinnässä on viime aikoina saavutettu useita edistysaskeleita samalla kun suurta kaistanleveyttä edellyttävien ja paljon tehoa kuluttavien langattomien palveluiden käyttö on yleistynyt ja multimediatoiminnoilla varustetut älylaitteet ovat vallanneet nopeasti markkinoita. Tämän seurauksena mobiililiikenne on lisääntynyt huomattavasti. Näiden suuntausten valossa langattoman 5G-viestinnän ja sitä seuraavien sukupolvien langattoman viestinnän kehitystavoitteita ovat muun muassa seuraavat: käyttäjän näkökulmasta energiatehokkuus, mahdollisimman lyhyet viiveajat ja palvelun käytöstä aiheutuvien kustannusten edullisuus sekä verkko-operaattorin näkökulmasta spektritehokkuus, tulojen kasvattaminen ja aiempaa matalammat pääoma- ja käyttökustannukset. Tässä väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan millaisia mahdollisuuksia mobiilipilvet tarjoavat energia-, spektri- ja kustannustehokkuuden parantamiseen ja siten 5G-verkkojen päätavoitteiden saavuttamiseen. Mobiilipilvi on lupaava osa 5G-teknologiaa, jossa perinteiset solukkoverkot ja lyhyen kantaman verkot yhdistyvät aivan uudenlaiseen ja tehokkaaseen tietoliikennearkkitehtuuriin. Mobiilipilvet voidaan nähdä joustavana ja tehokkaana alustana sisällön yhteisjakelulle, yhteistyölle, resurssien jakamiselle ja toiminnalle sosiaalisissa verkoissa. Tätä väitöskirjaa varten on tehty tutkimusta sekä mobiilipilviä koskevan perustutkimuksen että soveltavan tutkimuksen parissa. Perustutkimuksessa keskitytään tarkastelemaan pilvien muodostamisessa käytettäviä strategioita ja pilvien ylläpidossa käytettäviä mekanismeja. Soveltavan tutkimuksen alueella mobiilipilvien tarjoamia sisällön jakelun mahdollisuuksia tarkastellaan sekä luvanvaraisilla että vapaasti käytettävillä kaistoilla. Vapaasti käytettävillä kaistoilla toteutettavaa jakelua varten työssä kehitetään useita yhteistoimintastrategioita, joiden tehokkuutta verrataan perinteiseen monilähetysstrategiaan energiatehokkuuden, sisällön jakelun viiveiden ja käyttäjien kokemuksen laadun (Quality of Experience, QoE) osalta. Luvanvaraisilla kaistoilla toteutettavan sisällön jakelun osalta tarkastellaan moniparisessa ja samanaikaisessa molemminsuuntaisessa laitteiden välisessä viestinnässä (D2D-kommunikaatiossa) käytettäviä spektrin jakamisen ja resurssien allokoimisen algoritmeja, jotta spektritehokkuutta ja verkon suorituskykyä sekä palvelun laatua (Quality of Service, QoS) pystyttäisiin parantamaan. Tämän lisäksi työssä kehitellään liiketoimintamallia, jonka avulla voidaan pohtia, miten mobiilipilvillä voidaan vähentää käyttäjien ja operaattorien kustannuksia ja samalla kasvattaa operaattorien tuloja ja parantaa käyttäjien tyytyväisyyttä. Tämän työn tulokset osoittavat, että mobiilipilviteknologia on joustava ja tehokas alusta, jolla voidaan lisätä olennaisesti spektritehokkuutta, parantaa merkittävästi energiatehokkuutta ja verkon suorituskykyä sekä taata kustannustehokkuus sekä käyttäjien että verkko-operaattorien näkökulmasta.

The mesoscale organization and structure of convective clouds is thought to be rooted in the thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere and in the turbulent to mesoscale dynamics of the flow. Such structure may contribute to the transition between shallow and deep convection. The thermodynamic state of the boundary layer is forced by the amount of surface fluxes from below. Conversely, landscape patterns and land-cover heterogeneity may equally give rise to focused regions for deep convection triggering, in particular when patch sizes exceed 10 km. Since the convective boundary layer has a mediating function between the surface and deep storm clouds, the connection between surface and upper atmosphere is not straightforward. It is generally believed to involve local erosion of the capping inversion layer, the build-up of a moist energy supply, gradual humidification of the lower-free troposphere that reduces dry air entrainment into burgeoning deeper clouds, and thermal mesoscale circulations that can generate moisture convergence and locally forced ascent. To what extent microscale realistic surface heterogeneity and an interactive surface response matter to shallow and deep convection and its organization remains an open question. In this dissertation, we describe the coupling of a physiology-based vegetation model (HYBRID) and of a sea surface flux algorithm (COARE) to the cloud-resolving Active Tracer High-resolution Atmospheric Model (ATHAM). We investigate the full diurnal cycle of convection based on the example of the Hector storm over Tiwi Islands, notably the well-characterized event on 30th November 2005. The model performs well in terms of timing and cloud dynamics in comparison to a range of available observations. Also, ATHAM-HYBRID seems to do well in terms of flux partitioning. Whilst awaiting more thorough flux validation, we remain confident that the interactive surface response of both HYBRID and COARE is suited for the purpose of simulating convective-scale processes. We find the storm system evolution in 3D simulations to be robust with respect to differences in surface configuration and initialization. Within our 3D sensitivity runs, we could not identify a strong dependence on either realistic surface heterogeneity in the island landscape or on the interactive surface response. We conclude that in our case study at least, atmospheric (turbulent) dynamics likely dominate over surface heterogeneity effects, provided that the bulk magnitude of the surface energy fluxes, and their partitioning into sensible and latent heat (Bowen ratio), remain unaltered. This is consistent with 2D sensitivity studies, where we find model grid-spacing and momentum diffusion, governing the dynamics, to have an important influence on the overall evolution of deep convection. Fine grid-spacing is necessary, as the median width of updraught cores mostly does not exceed 1000 m. We associate this influence with the dry air entrainment rate in the wake of rising parcels, and with how resolution and diffusion act on coherent structures in the flow. In 2D sensitivity studies with differences in realistic heterogeneities of surface properties, we find little evidence for a clear deterministic influence of these properties on the transition between shallow and deep convection, in spite of largely different storm evolutions across the various runs. In these runs, we tentatively ascribe triggering to stochastic features in the flow, without discarding the relevance of convergence lines produced by mesoscale density currents, such as the sea breeze and cold pool storm outflows.

3D-Punktwolken haben die Objektvermessung in den letzten 25 Jahren signifikant verändert. Da Einzelpunktmessungen durch flächenhafte Messungen in Form von Punktwolken bei vielen Anwendungen ersetzt wurden, spricht man auch von einem Paradigmenwechsel in der Vermessung. Ermöglicht wurde diese Änderung in der Messmethodik durch die Innovationen im Instrumentenbau und die rasanten Entwicklungen der Computertechnologie. Luftgestützte und terrestrische Laserscanner sowie handgeführte 3D-Scanner liefern heute direkt dichte Punktwolken, während dichte 3D-Punkt-wolken aus Fotos bildbasierter Aufnahmesysteme indirekt abgeleitet werden, die zur detaillierten 3D-Objektrekonstruktion zunehmend eingesetzt werden. In dieser Arbeit werden Untersuchungen vorgestellt, mit denen das geometrische Genauigkeitsverhalten verschiedener scannender Messsysteme evaluiert und geprüft wurde. Während bei den untersuchten terrestrischen Laserscannern in den Untersuchungen die Genauigkeitsangaben (1 Sigma) der technischen Spezifikationen der Systemhersteller von 3-5 mm für den 3D-Punkt und die Distanzmessung eingehalten wurden, zeigten sich dagegen bei vielen untersuchten 3D-Handscannern signifikante Abweichungen gegenüber den technischen Spezifikationen. Diese festgestellten Abweichungen deuten auf eine gewisse geometrische Instabilität des jeweiligen Messsystems hin, die entweder durch die Bauweise und/oder durch eine ungenaue Systemkalibrierung (besonders hinsichtlich der Maßstäblichkeit) verursacht werden. Daher ist davon auszugehen, dass diese handgeführten 3D-Scanner offensichtlich erst am Anfang ihrer Entwicklungsphase stehen und dass noch genügend Optimierungspotential vorhanden ist. Als flexible und effiziente Alternativen zu den scannenden Messsystemen haben sich seit ca. 10 Jahren die bildbasierten Aufnahmesysteme zunehmend im Markt etabliert. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten Untersuchungen des bildbasierten Aufnahme- und Auswertungsverfahren haben gezeigt, dass diese (mit Farbattributen versehene) 3D-Punktwolken, je nach Bildmaßstab und Oberflächenmaterial des Objektes, durchaus den Genauigkeiten der Laserscanner entsprechen. Gegenüber den Ergebnissen vieler 3D-Handscanner weisen die durch bildbasierte Aufnahmeverfahren generierten Punktwolken qualitativ bessere Resultate auf. Allerdings zeigte der Creaform HandySCAN 700, der auf einem photogrammetrischen Aufnahmeprinzip beruht, als einzige Ausnahme bei der handgeführten 3D-Scannern sehr gute Ergebnisse, die mit Durchschnittswerten besser als 30 Mikrometern sogar in den Bereichen der Referenzsysteme (hier Streifenprojektionssysteme) lagen. Die entwickelten Prüfverfahren und die entsprechenden durchgeführten Untersuchungen haben sich als praxistauglich erwiesen, da man auch unter zur Hilfenahme der VDI/VDE Richtlinie 2634 ver-gleichbare Ergebnisse erzielt, die dem praxisorientierten Anwender Aussagen über die Leistungsfä-higkeit des Messsystems erlauben. Bei den im statischen Modus erfassten Scans kommen noch Fehlereinflüsse durch die Registrierung der Scans hinzu, während bei kinematisch erfassten Scans die Genauigkeiten der verschiedenen (absoluten) Positionierungssensoren auf dem Fehlerhaushalt der Punktwolke addiert werden. Eine sorgfältige Systemkalibrierung der verschiedenen im kinematischen Modus arbeitenden Positionierungs- und Aufnahmesensoren des mobilen Multi-Sensor-Systems ermöglicht eine 3D-Punktgenauigkeit von ca. 3-5 cm, die unter guten Bedingungen mit höherwertigen Sensoren ggf. noch verbessert werden kann. Mit statischen Scans kann eine höhere Genauigkeit von besser als 1 cm für den 3D-Punkt erreicht werden, jedoch sind bei größeren aufzunehmenden Flächen mobile Aufnahmesysteme wesentlich effizienter. Die Anwendung definiert daher das zum Einsatz kommende Messverfahren. 3D-Punktwolken dienen als Grundlage für die Objektrekonstruktion auf verschiedenen Wegen: a) Engineering Modelling als generalisierte CAD-Konstruktion durch geometrische Primitive und b) Mesh Modelling durch Dreiecksvermaschung der Punktwolken zur exakten Oberflächenbeschreibung. Durch die Generalisierung bei der CAD-Konstruktion können sehr schnell Abweichungen vom Sollmaß von bis zu 10 cm (und größer) entstehen, allerdings werden durch die Anpassung auf geometrische Primitive eine signifikante Datenreduktion und eine topologische Strukturierung erreicht. Untersuchungen haben jedoch auch gezeigt, dass die Anzahl der Polygone bei der Dreiecksvermaschung je nach Oberflächenbeschaffenheit des Objektes auf 25% und sogar auf 10% der Originaldatenmenge bei intelligenter Ausdünnung (z.B. krümmungsbasiert) reduziert werden kann, ohne die visuelle und geometrische Qualität des Ergebnisses zu stark zu beeinträchtigen. Je nach Objektgröße können hier Abweichungen von unter einem Millimeter (z.B. bei archäologischen Fundstücken) bis zu 5 cm im Durchschnitt bei größeren Objekten erreicht werden. Heute können Punktwolken eine wichtige Grundlage zur Konstruktion der Umgebung für viele Virtual Reality Anwendungen bilden, bei denen die geometrische Genauigkeit der modellierten Objekte im Einzelfall keine herausragende Rolle spielt. / 3D point clouds have significantly changed the surveying of objects in the last 25 years. Since in many applications, the individual point measurements were replaced through area-based measurements in form of point clouds, a paradigm shift in surveying has been fulfilled. This change in measurement methodology was made possible with the rapid developments in instrument manufacturing and computer technology. Today, airborne and terrestrial laser scanners, as well as hand-held 3D scanners directly generate dense point clouds, while dense point clouds are indirectly derived from photos of image-based recording systems used for detailed 3D object reconstruction in almost any scale. In this work, investigations into the geometric accuracy of some of these scanning systems are pre-sented to document and evaluate their performance. While terrestrial laser scanners mostly met the accuracy specifications in the investigations, 3-5 mm for 3D points and distance measurements as defined in the technical specifications of the system manufacturer, significant differences are shown, however, by many tested hand-held 3D scanners. These observed deviations indicate a certain geometric instability of the measuring system, caused either by the construction/manufacturing and/or insufficient calibration (particularly with regard to the scale). It is apparent that most of the hand-held 3D scanners are at the beginning of the technical development, which still offers potential for optimization. The image-based recording systems have been increasingly accepted by the market as flexible and efficient alternatives to laser scanning systems for about ten years. The research of image-based recording and evaluation methods presented in this work has shown that these coloured 3D point clouds correspond to the accuracy of the laser scanner depending on the image scale and surface material of the object. Compared with the results of most hand-held 3D scanners, point clouds gen-erated by image-based recording techniques exhibit superior quality. However, the Creaform HandySCAN 700, based on a photogrammetric recording principle (stereo photogrammetry), shows as the solitary exception of the hand-held 3D scanners very good results with better than 30 micrometres on average, representing accuracies even in the range of the reference systems (here structured light projection systems). The developed test procedures and the corresponding investigations have been practically proven for both terrestrial and hand-held 3D scanners, since comparable results can be obtained using the VDI/VDE guidelines 2634, which allows statements about the performance of the tested scanning system for practice-oriented users. For object scans comprised of multiple single scan acquired in static mode, errors of the scan registration have to be added, while for scans collected in the kine-matic mode the accuracies of the (absolute) position sensors will be added on the error budget of the point cloud. A careful system calibration of various positioning and recording sensors of the mobile multi-sensor system used in kinematic mode allows a 3D point accuracy of about 3-5 cm, which if necessary can be improved with higher quality sensors under good conditions. With static scans an accuracy of better than 1 cm for 3D points can be achieved surpassing the potential of mobile recording systems, which are economically much more efficient if larger areas have to be scanned. The 3D point clouds are the basis for object reconstruction in two different ways: a) engineering modelling as generalized CAD construction through geometric primitives and b) mesh modelling by triangulation of the point clouds for the exact representation of the surface. Deviations up to 10 cm (and possibly higher) from the nominal value can be created very quickly through the generalization in the CAD construction, but on the other side a significant reduction of data and a topological struc-turing can be achieved by fitting the point cloud into geometric primitives. However, investigations have shown that the number of polygons can be reduced to 25% and even 10% of the original data in the mesh triangulation using intelligent polygon decimation algorithms (e.g. curvature based) depending on the surface characteristic of the object, without having too much impact on the visual and geometric quality of the result. Depending on the object size, deviations of less than one milli-metre (e.g. for archaeological finds) up to 5 cm on average for larger objects can be achieved. In the future point clouds can form an important basis for the construction of the environment for many virtual reality applications, where the visual appearance is more important than the perfect geometric accuracy of the modelled objects.

No description available.

This thesis provides a novel architecture for the creation and management of virtual multimedia adaptation services offered by a multimedia-enabled cloud. The aim of the proposed scheme is to provide an optimal yet a transparent user access to adapted media contents while isolating them from the heterogeneity of the utilized devices, diversity of media formats, as well as the details of the adaptation services and performance variations of the underlying network. This goal is achieved through the development of service virtualization models that provide various levels of abstraction of the actual physical services and their performance parameters. Such virtual models offer adaptation functions by comprising adaptation services with accordance to their parameters. Additionally, parameters describing the functional specifics of the adaptation functions, as well as multimedia content features, are organized into a hierarchical structure that facilitates extraction of the virtual models capable of satisfying the conditions expressed by the user requests. At the same time the paramter/feature organization structure itself is flexible enough to allow users to specify media delivery requests at various levels of request details (e.g., summarize video vs. drop specific frames). As a result, in response to a user request for a multimedia content, an optimal virtual service adaptation path is calculated, describing the needed media adaptation operations as well as the appropriate mapping to the physical resources capable of executing such functions. The selection of the adaptation path is done with the use of a novel performance-history based selection mechanism that takes into account the performance variations and relations of the services in a dynamically changing environment of multimedia clouds. A number of experiments are conducted to demonstrate the potential of the proposed work in terms of the enhanced processing time and service quality.

Many enterprises are currently exploring the possibility of migrating some or all of their IT functionalities to public clouds with the objective of reducing their overall IT service costs or to open new business frontiers. Unfortunately, making such a decision is not a straightforward task; it requires a vigorous evaluation of the various benefits, risks and costs associated with the migration of their diverse business processes that comprise of their current IT services. Yet, this problem has received very little attention in the literature, mainly due to its interdisciplinary nature. This thesis aims at filling this gap by aiding the enterprises during the phase of making their cloud migration decision. The contributions of this work are twofold. First, a novel cloud-migration framework is introduced to guide the enterprises through a sequence of well-defined recommended analysis steps. These steps culminate with the formulation of the migration decision problem as a mathematical optimization one. The second contribution is a decision engine that efficiently solves this optimization problem. More precisely, the proposed framework gradually guides the enterprise to first identify the various business processes that are related to their IT services and then to determine the relationship and the communication needed among those processes. The identified inter-process communication represents an indicator of how tightly coupled these business processes are to each other. When outsourcing business processes, tightly coupled processes add a high communication cost and may introduce service latency if they are not co-located. As such, inter-process communication becomes an important input parameter that affects the migration decision. Enterprises can then determine to partially or completely migrate IT services to clouds. Furthermore, multiple vendors can be used for different services. However, when different vendors are involved, the communication cost between different processes increases. The objective is to maximize profit for an organization which includes lowering IT expenses in the long term without compromising data integrity or security. An optimization formula is finally constructed to help the enterprise determine which services to migrate given input parameters of the cost of doing business in-house, cost of outsourcing, and communication costs. Finally, a case study is utilized to demonstrate the performance of the proposed work by analyzing the process of migrating the services to clouds for an IPTV service provider. More specifically, the case study focuses on the content delivery network (CDN) within the IPTV provider’s infrastructure which is responsible for delivering contents to viewers. The CDN network can use the proposed profit-optimization formula to determine whether to utilize a cloud service or to use its internal resource to deliver the content. A performance evaluation from a simulation is presented to demonstrate the proposed profit-optimization formula can return a set of optimal mix of both internal and external services to maximize profits.

Stars on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) lose a significant fraction of their mass to their surroundings through stellar winds. As a result, they are surrounded by circumstellar shells of gas and dust. This stellar mass loss replenishes and enriches the interstellar medium (ISM) with the products of stellar nucleosynthesis, progressively increasing its metallicity and thereby driving galactic chemical evolution. In this thesis I present a comprehensive study of oxygen-rich (O-rich) AGB stars and red supergiants (RSG) observed with the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph and Infrared Space Observatory Short Wavelength Spectrometer in the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and Galactic globular clusters; focusing on the composition of the dust in the circumstellar envelopes surrounding these stars. Combining spectroscopic and photometric observations with the GRAMS grid of radiative transfer models to derive (dust) mass-loss rates, I detect crystalline silicates in stars with dust mass-loss rates which span over a factor of 1000, down to rates of ~10^{-9} Msun/yr. Detections of crystalline silicates are more prevalent in higher mass-loss rate objects, and our results indicate that the dust mass-loss rate has a greater influence on the crystalline fraction than the gas mass-loss rate, suggesting that thermal annealing of amorphous silicate grains is the primary formation mechanism of crystalline silicates in such environments rather than the direct condensation of crystalline silicates from the gas phase. I also find that metallicity influences the composition of crystalline silicates, with enstatite seen increasingly at low metallicity, while forsterite becomes depleted at these metallicities due to the different chemical composition of the gas. To trace the evolution of alumina and silicate dust along the AGB, I present an alternative grid of MODUST radiative transfer-models for a range of dust compositions, mass-loss rates, dust shell inner radii and stellar parameters. Our analysis shows that the AKARI [11]-[15] versus [3.2]-[7] colour is a robust indicator of the fractional abundance of alumina in O-rich AGB stars. From the modelling, I show that a grain mixture consisting primarily of amorphous silicates, with contributions from amorphous alumina and metallic iron provides a good fit to the observed spectra of O-rich AGB stars in the LMC. In agreement with previous studies, we find a correlation between the dust composition and mass-loss rate; the lower the mass-loss rate the higher the percentage of alumina in the shell. Finally, I present mid-infrared observations of the Local Group dwarf elliptical galaxy M32; where I find a large population of dust-enshrouded stars. These observations will act as a pathfinder for future observations with the JWST and SPICA.

In this thesis I present work done on the subject of star formation through the study of infrared dark clouds. We studied the velocity fields in several IRDCs using spectral line mapping. We also performed observations of a high density tracer and its deuterated counterpart. These observations allow me to assess the kinematics of these clouds and the evolutionary state of the observed targets. The sample observed is an important starting point for the search of early and quiescent high-mass regions. We mapped several IRDCs using the 22m ATNF Mopra Telescope in high-density molecular tracers at 3 mm, HNC (1-0) and N2H+ (1-0). We present integrated intensity emission and velocity field maps of these IRDCs. The molecular emission in the maps matches well with the extinction seen in the mid-IR. For an IRDC-complex we see connecting emission in the whole filament. We calculate kinematic distances and masses of the IRDCs. The IRDCs typically display an ordered velocity field within the clouds. The mean velocity gradient of the sample was 0.4 km/s/pc. We show how this velocity gradient can mean gas flows within the cloud into the central regions in order to feed the central cores. We observed 54 cores in IRDCs using N2H+ (1-0) and (3-2) to determine the kinematics of the densest material, where stars will form. We also observed N2D+ (3-2) towards 29 of the brightest peaks to analyze the level of deuteration which is an excellent probe of the quiescent of the early stages of star formation. There were 13 detections of N2D+ (3-2). This is one of the largest samples of IRDCs yet observed in these species. The deuteration ratio in the sources with detected N2D+ (3-2) has a mean of 0.024 and reaches a maximum value of 0.14. For most of the sources the material traced by N2D+ and N2H+ (3-2) still has significant turbulent motions, however three objects show subthermal N2D+ velocity dispersion. Surprisingly the presence or absence of an embedded 70 micron source shows no correlation with the detection of N2D+ (3-2), nor does it correlate with any change in velocity dispersion or excitation temperature. Comparison with recent models of deuteration suggest evolutionary timescales of these regions of several freefall times or less.

This thesis investigates the relationship between open hexagonal cell cloud motion and surface winds in the northeast Pacific Ocean. Cloud targets are tracked using an automatic scheme fashioned after Barnea and Silverman's (1972) Sequential Similarity Detection Algorithm. The cloud motion vectors obtained are comparable to results obtained by tracking the same cloud targets manually. The well-organized character of open hexagonal cells permits a comparison of various methods of estimating the height of the cloud motion vectors. One method, which uses the minimum infrared pixel value, and a second method, which establishes an arbitrary minimum cloud top temperature, are both found to be unsuitable because of cirrus contamination and partially cloud filled pixels. The cloud motion winds for open hexagonal cells and disorganized cumulus clouds are compared with winds measured at collocated surface buoys. The lack of directional shears between open hexagonal cell movements and surface winds, and directional shears of 14° to 27° for the disorganized cumulus clouds, agree with other observations for the two types of clouds. The differences between the two cloud types suggests that any estimate of surface winds from cloud motion should include cloud type information. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

We present the results of a program to map the Sh2-235 molecular cloud complex in the CO and (CO)-C-13 J = 2 - 1 transitions using the Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope. The map resolution is 38 '' (FWHM), with an rms noise of 0.12K brightness temperature, for a velocity resolution of 0.34 km s(-1). With the same telescope, we also mapped the CO J = 3 - 2 line at a frequency of 345 GHz, using a 64 beam focal plane array of heterodyne mixers, achieving a typical rms noise of 0.5 K brightness temperature with a velocity resolution of 0.23 km s(-1). The three spectral line data cubes are available for download. Much of the cloud appears to be slightly sub-thermally excited in the J = 3 level, except for in the vicinity of the warmest and highest column density areas, which are currently forming stars. Using the CO and (CO)-C-13. J = 2 - 1 lines, we employ an LTE model to derive the gas column density over the entire mapped region. Examining a 125 pc(2). region centered on the most active star formation in the vicinity of Sh2-235, we find that the young stellar object surface density scales as approximately the 1.6-power of the gas column density. The area distribution function of the gas is a steeply declining exponential function of gas column density. Comparison of the morphology of ionized and molecular gas suggests that the cloud is being substantially disrupted by expansion of the H II regions, which may be triggering current star formation.