No description available.

No description available.

Botany is an old science, one branch of which, taxonomy, antedates recorded history. In fact, the early Chinese, Egyptian, and Assyrian cultures were based, to a degree, on cultivated plants (Porter, 1959). The early developers of systematic botany included Theophrastus (370 - 287 B.C. ), Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 A.D.), and Dioscorides (lst century, A.D.). Theophrastus, the "father of botany," classified plants according to the growth habit. Thus he had four groups: barbs, undershrubs, shrubs, and trees.

Whether a particular soil should be used for cropping, pasture, woodland or some other purpose, involves consequences which are far too important to be left to chance. Soil is a natural body having a specific morphology and in order to understand its behaviour as fully as possible, it is necessary to determine and to correlate its characteristics or properties under various sets of circumstances. [...]

Packet classification plays an important role in next generation networks. Packet classification is important to fulfill the requirements for many applications including firewalls, multimedia services, intrusion detection services, and differentiated services to name just a few. Hardware solutions such as CAM/TCAM do not scale well in space. Current software-based packet classification algorithms exhibit relatively poor performance, prompting many researchers to concentrate on novel frameworks and architectures that employ both hardware and software components. In this thesis we propose two novel algorithms, Packet Classification with Incremental Update (PCIU) and Group Based Search packet classification Algorithm (GBSA), that are scalable and demonstrate excellent results in terms of preprocessing and classification. The PCIU algorithm is an innovative and efficient packet classification algorithm with a unique incremental update capability that demonstrates powerful results and is accessible for many different tasks and clients. The algorithm was further improved and made more available for a variety of applications through its implementation in hardware. Four such implementations are detailed and discussed in this thesis. A hardware accelerator based on an ESL approach, using Handel-C, resulted in a 22x faster classification than a pure software implementation running on a state of the art Xeon processor. An ASIP implementation achieved on average a 21x quicker classification. We also propose another novel algorithm, GBSA, for packet classification that is scalable, fast and efficient. On average the algorithm consumes 0.4 MB of memory for a 10k rule set. In the worst case scenario, the classification time per packet is 2 μs, and the pre-processing speed is 3M Rule/sec, based on a CPU operating at 3.4 GHz. The proposed algorithm was evaluated and compared to state-of-the-art techniques, such as RFC, HiCut, Tuple, and PCIU, using several standard benchmarks. The obtained results indicate that GBSA outperforms these algorithms in terms of speed, memory usage and pre-processing time. The algorithm, furthermore, was improved and made more accessible for a variety of applications through implementation in hardware. Three approaches using this algorithm are detailed and discussed in this thesis. The first approach was implemented using an Application Specific Instruction Processor (ASIP), while the others were pure RTL implementations using two different ESL flows (Impulse-C and Handel-C). The GBSA ASIP implementation achieved, on average, a 18x faster running speed than a pure software implementation operating on a Xeon processor. Conversely, the hardware accelerators (based on the ESL approaches) resulted in 9x faster processing.

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No description available.

Plant collections, field and herbarium studies were used to evaluate classifications of Impatiens. Accepted interpretations of the perianth are questioned; and a program of developmental studies on several categories of inflorescences proposed. The fruit has been incorrectly described. It is of two types, differing in manner of dehiscence. Chromosome numbers are an inadequate taxonomic character because of parallel cytoevolution. Karyotypes were prepared, but it was found that homologues were not distinguishable. A technique for Hy-banding was developed, and homologues in plants of I. leschenaultii Wall. identified. It is proposed that Hy-banding can identify marker chromosomes which will be a more efficient character than complete karyotypes. The classifications of Impatiens are discussed, and it is concluded that one founded on flower-pollinator relationships is the best, although convergence is a problem. The genera of the Balsaminaceae are reviewed. It is concluded that these show only slight deviations from Impatiens, and are rejected.

Taxonomic descriptions in English and Spanish, and keys to 16 closely related species of the Muhlenbergia montana (Nutt.) Hitchc. complex were generated by means of DELTA programs, using morphological character data from an automated taxonomic data bank. A chromatographic survey of the flavonoid content of 14 species produced 24 different flavonoids, of which 22 were chemically identified. The flavonoid profiles supported the morphological delimitation of the species and provided a basis for clearly separating the annual species (M. crispiseta and M. peruviana) from the perennial species in this complex. Two new perennial species (M. cualensis and M. michisensis) were described from populations which are morphologically and chemically distinct.

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