Stora Enso, a big Swedish-Finnish forest industry company, wants to find a substitute for the dye that is used in their edge wick analyzes. The dye amaranth, that is used today, is a classified substance that is unhealthy and hazardous. It causes irritation to the eyes, skin and respiratory system. Edge wick is a method to determine the amount of penetrated liquid into the unprotected edges of a packaging board (the surfaces are covered with plastic). It is important to analyze liquid penetration to know that the board will sustain the liquids that it might be exposed to, for example sterilizing liquid (hydrogen peroxide), juice or wine. The dye is used as coloring agent for colorless solutions to enable visual evaluation of the penetration. In the present study several colorants were screened and evaluated in edge wick tests with the standard test liquids used at Stora Enso. Machine, pilot and handmade boards were used in the tests. Surface tension of some test liquids was also determined, as it is important to know if the dyes change the liquid properties since this may influence the penetration. The result of the tests was that a new dye was found, Allura red AC. It has a similar chemical structure to amaranth and seems to act in the same way in different type of test conditions. The recommendation is that amaranth be substituted for allura red AC, since the latter is less hazardous and is not a classified substance.

The primary objective of this thesis is to design advanced interference resilient schemes for asynchronous slow frequency hopping wireless personal area networks (FH-WPAN) and time division multiple access (TDMA) cellular systems in interference dominant environments. We also propose an interference-resilient power allocation method for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. For asynchronous FH-WPANs in the presence of frequent packet collisions, we propose a single antenna interference canceling dual decision feedback (IC-DDF) receiver based on joint maximum likelihood (ML) detection and recursive least squares (RLS) channel estimation. For the system level performance evaluation, we propose a novel geometric method that combines bit error rate (BER) and the spatial distribution of the traffic load of CCI for the computation of packet error rate (PER). We also derived the probabilities of packet collision in multiple asynchronous FH-WPANs with uniform and nonuniform traffic patterns. For the design of TDMA receivers resilient to CCI in frequency selective channels, we propose a soft output joint detection interference rejection combining delayed decision feedback sequence estimation (JD IRC-DDFSE) scheme. In the proposed scheme, IRC suppresses the CCI, while DDFSE equalizes ISI with reduced complexity. Also, the soft outputs are generated from IRC-DDFSE decision metric to improve the performance of iterative or non-iterative type soft-input outer code decoders. For the design of interference resilient power allocation scheme in MIMO systems, we investigate an adaptive power allocation method using subset antenna transmission (SAT) techniques. Motivated by the observation of capacity imbalance among the multiple parallel sub-channels, the SAT method achieves high spectral efficiency by allocating power on a selected transmit antenna subset. For 4 x 4 V-BLAST MIMO systems, the proposed scheme with SAT showed analogous results. Adaptive modulation schemes combined with the proposed method increase the capacity gains. From a feasibility viewpoint, the proposed method is a practical solution to CCI-limited MIMO systems since it does not require the channel state information (CSI) of CCI.

Habitat disturbances play a major role in wildlife distribution. Disturbances such as loss of breeding habitat and fragmentation are of particular concern for Neotropical migrant songbird populations. Additionally, different avian species respond differently to the surrounding environment at different spatial scales. Thus, multi-scale studies on bird abundance and reproductive success is necessary for evaluating the effects of habitat alterations. The golden-cheeked warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) is a Neotropical migrant songbird that breeds exclusively in central Texas. In 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the golden-cheeked warbler as endangered, providing habitat loss among the list of justifications. Habitat requirements for this species are known to include mature juniper-oak (Juniperus-Quercus) woodlands; however, relationships between habitat characteristics and golden-cheeked warbler reproductive success remain unclear. Whereas the majority of golden-cheeked warbler research has focused on areas in the center of the breeding range, little is known about interactions between warblers and the environment at the edge of the range. Therefore, it is important to understand these relationships for successful golden-cheeked warbler management. I investigated relationships between golden-cheeked warbler reproductive success and habitat characteristics, including canopy closure and tree species composition, at the study site and territory scale. My study took place within Kickapoo Cavern State Park and surrounding private properties in Kinney and Edwards counties in the southwest corner of the golden-cheeked warbler breeding range. I derived habitat characteristics from satellite imagery from the US Geological Survey National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) and from field sampling. The NLCD provided data on canopy closure and tree species composition at a 30 m resolution. Additionally, I used spherical densitometers and transect evaluations to ground-truth data and take more detailed measurements. I determined reproductive success by nest monitoring and the Vickery index when nests could not be found. I monitored 80 territories across six study sites in 2009 and 2010. Reproductive success was 39.5 percent in 2009 and 59.4 percent in 2010. I found statistically significant results at the study site scale, whereas golden-cheeked warbler abundance increased as the portion of woodland increased. Similarly, I found that golden-cheeked warbler reproductive success increased at the study site scale as canopy closure increased. I did not find correlations between reproductive success and canopy closure or tree species composition at the territory scale. Results suggest that golden-cheeked warblers utilize a wider variety of habitat composition than previously thought, and habitat composition as a whole may not be the driving factors influencing warbler reproductive success in this region.

Abstract Instant Messenger has become one of the most popular software among juvenile and almost can not be parted from their lives. This research would like to probe deeper into the significance of Messenger in those minority families which are marginalized by the whole society. Therefore, this research takes the minority juvenile, being less social welfare distributed, as the subject, through fundamental interviews of cases, to have an understanding of these juvenile¡¦s using Messenger and Messenger¡¦s significance in their daily lives. This research presents in two ways: one is through story narration providing ample information and clues to achieve an overall understanding; second is to analyze. Aiming at the purpose, divided into the form of relation-establishing and the motive and mechanism of interrelation to analyze the phenomenon of using Messenger. The research finds that these juvenile mostly come from a minority family, such as grand parenting. They lack parental care, get lower grades and cannot get identified by the teachers. As a result, they are depressed in real life. In addition, these juvenile use Messenger in different and distinctive ways from others. Which include : a good means of ¡§calling together¡¨ ¡V to call friends and fellows into group fight; a stealthy way of running away from home ¡V to use Messenger for preparation of running away from home; ¡§group¡¨ ¡V to communicate in an utmost speed; ¡§E generation affaire d¡¦amour¡¨ ¡V Messenger becomes a tool for developing affaire d¡¦amour; a secret means of interconnection; pressure releasing ¡V to release pressure from life through chatting with friends in Messenger; to generate self-identification through using Messenger. For these frustrated juvenile who come from minority families and can not get satisfaction from school and society, Messenger is a bigger inducement. Therefore, the society, their parents and teachers should pay more concern and care to these minority group of juvenile.

No description available.

This study uses pitfall traps to collect ground-dwelling invertebrates in Nanjen Forest. The ground-dwelling invertebrates in Gufu Area are mainly contributed by Hymenoptera, Collembola, Coleoptera, Araneida. There is no significant difference between the diversity index of pitfalls with various distances to the edge of forest in Gufu Area. The similarity index between each pitfall is relatively low, it suggests that the heterogeneity of various micro-habitats is high. The sex-ratio of different spider species varied from 0.09 - 1.73, and the habitat preference is specific. The number of the spiders is positive-correlated with the number of the Collembola and the Orthoptera.

This thesis first presents a novel and highly accurate methodology for investigating the kinetics of photoacid diffusion and catalyzed-deprotection of positive-tone chemically amplified resists during post exposure bake (PEB) by in-situ monitoring the change of resist and capacitance (RC) of resist film during PEB. Deprotection converts the protecting group to volatile group, which changes the dielectric constant of resist. So the deprotection rate can be extracted from the change of capacitance. The photoacid diffusivity is extracted from the resistance change because diffusivity determines the rate of change of the acid distribution. Furthermore, by comparing the R and C curves, the dependence of acid diffusivity on reaction state can be extracted. The kinetics of non-Fickean acid transportation, deprotection, free volume generation and absorption/escaping, and resist shrinkage is analyzed and a comprehensive model is proposed that includes these chemical/physical mechanisms. Then in this thesis a novel lithographic technique, liquid immersion contact lithography (LICL) is proposed and the simulations are performed to illustrate its main features and advantages. Significant depth-of-field (DOF) enhancement can be achieved for large pitch gratings with deep-UV light (λ=248nm) illumination with both TM and TE polarizations by liquid immersion. Better than 100nm DOF can be achieved by when printing 70nm apertures. The simulation results show that it is very promising to apply this technique in scanning near field optical microscopy. Finally, a rigorous, full vector imaging model of non-ideal mask is developed and the simulation of the imaging of such a mask with 2D roughness is performed. Line edge roughness (LER) has been a major issue limiting the performance of sub-100nm photolithography. A lot of factors contribute to LER, including mask roughness, lens imperfection, resist chemistry, process variation, etc. To evaluate the effect of mask roughness on LER, a rigorous full vector model has been developed by the author. We calculate the electromagnetic (EM) field immediately after a rough mask by using TEMPEST and simulate the projected wafer image with SPLAT. The EM field and wafer image deviate from those from an ideal mask. LER is finally calculated based on the projected image.

No description available.

The following is an in-depth look into the artistic process of actor Kyle Christopher Schnack, as reflected through his three year graduate level education in acting at the University of Texas at Austin and his work in Suzan Zeder’s play “The Edge of Peace;” a joint production through The University of Texas at Austin and Seattle Children’s Theatre. / text

Client devices operating at the edges on the Internet, in homes, cars, offices, and elsewhere, are highly heterogeneous in terms of their hardware configurations, form factors, and capabilities, ranging from small sensors to wearable and mobile devices, to the stationary ones like smart TVs and desktop machines. With recent and future advances in wireless networking allowing all such devices to interact with each other and with the cloud, it becomes possible to combine and augment capabilities of individual devices via services running at the edge - in edge clouds - and/or via services running in remote datacenters. The virtual platform approach to combining and enhancing such devices developed in this research makes possible the creation of innovative end user services, using low-latency communications with nearby devices to create for each end user exactly the platform needed for current tasks, guided by permissions and policies controlled by remote, cloud-resident social network services (SNS). To end users, virtual platforms operate beyond the limitations of individual devices, as natural extensions of those devices that offer improved functionality and performance, with ease-of-use provided by cloud-level global context and knowledge.