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This essay discusses the futuristic view of radical human enhancement through the lenses of the transhumanist project. The focus of the essay is on the transhumanistic values proposed by Nick Bostrom, and the technological progress that transhumanism proposes. In this essay I ask if the transhumanist project is a desirable project and in our long-term interests as humans. I propose that at least two of three criteria must be fulfilled in order for any radical human enhancement project to be a desirable project. Of these 3 criteria, two will be addressed in this essay. The two criteria discussed is named “The worthwhile criterion”, and “The obsolescence criterion”. The thirds criteria regarding feasibility will not be addressed in this essay. The conclusion is that transhumanist project cannot fulfill these two criteria and thus it is not a desirable project. / Den här uppsatsen diskuterar den futuristiska synen på radikal mänsklig förbättring genom linserna av det transhumanistiska projektet. Fokuset i uppsatsen ligger på de transhumanistiska värderingar som förslagits av Nick Boström, och det de tekniska framstegen som transhumanism föreslår. I denna uppsats ställer jag frågan om det transhumanistiska projektet är ett önskvärt projekt i våra långsiktiga intressen som människor. Jag föreslår att åtminstone två av tre kriterier måste uppfyllas för att ett radikalt mänskligt förbättringsprojekt ska vara ett önskvärt projekt. Av dessa tre kriterier så kommer två att behandlas i denna uppsats. De två kriterierna som diskuteras heter ”Det värdefulla kriteriet” och ”Föråldrande kriteriet”. Det tredje kriteriet angående genomförbarhet kommer inte att behandlas i denna uppsats. Slutsatsen är att det transhumanistiska projektet inte kan uppfylla dessa två kriterier och därför inte är ett önskvärt projekt.

Speech enhancement in multi-speaker babble remains an enormous challenge. In this study, we developed a binaural speech enhancement system to extract information pertaining to a target speech signal embedded in a noisy background for use in future hearing-aid systems. The principle underlying the proposed system is to simulate the perceptual auditory segregation process carried out in the normal human auditory system. Based on the spatial location, pitch and onset cues, the system can identify and enhance those time-frequency regions which constitute the target speech. The proposed system is capable of dealing with a wide variety of noise intrusions, including competing speech signals and multi-speaker babble. It also works under mild reverberation conditions. Systematic evaluation shows that the system achieves substantial improvement on the intelligibility of target signal, while it largely suppresses the unwanted background signal. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

In July of 1993 an underground coal mine owned and operated by Southern Ohio coal company (SOCCO) underwent emergency recovery operations due to flash flooding of the mine from an adjacent abandoned mine. During mine dewatering operations, approximately 132,650 liters per minute of acid mine water was released into the Parker Run tributary draining into Leading Creek. The 24.2-km section of Leading Creek was heavily impacted eradicating most aquatic organisms. An acutely toxic impact resulted from the discharge of high conductivity (~6000µmhos), low pH (2.5-3.1 pH units), high metal concentrations (iron and iron floc, manganese, copper, nickel, zinc and aluminum, mg/L) and high total suspended solids (TSS). Through the process of a Consent Decree, a proactive plan was developed for monitoring the recovery in Leading Creek and to develop an enhancement plan for the watershed. SOCCO set aside $1.9 million that has grown to $2.5 million to cover the costs of implementing specific enhancement measures in the watershed. The primary goal of the enhancement plan was to describe actions that could reasonably be taken to affect measurable ecological rehabilitation or enhancement of the Leading Creek stream system so it attains the highest Ohio EPA aquatic life use designation possible. The objectives of this research project were to identify specific ecosystem stressors affecting the habitat quality within the watershed preventing Leading Creek from attaining either the Warmwater Habitat (WWH) or the Excellent Warmwater Habitat (EWH) designation and to provide potential remediation techniques to address the identified stressors. Although natural processes have lead to partial recovery in Leading Creek from the impact of dewatering, reconnaissance has shown significant problems relating to toxicity and habitat degradation in the watershed. Seventeen tributaries and ten mainstem stations were chosen to receive monthly monitoring as point source discharges, including biological, chemical, toxicological, and hydrological sampling. Specific ecotoxicological parameters studied included water and sediment quality, algal colonization upon artificial substrates, benthic macroinvertebrate sampling (qualitatively and quantitatively), acute water column toxicity, sediment chronic toxicity and </i>in situ</i> clam toxicity. Evaluation of habitat impairment included habitat assessments, in-stream riparian surveys and land use analysis. Through the analysis of laboratory and field data, agriculture and Abandoned Mined Land (AML) were identified as the two main stressors in the watershed. Agricultural practices contributed chronic toxicity through habitat degradation identified from benthic macroinvertebrate data and sediment depth measurements. AML impacted several tributaries and the Leading Creek mainstem by degrading water quality through the introduction of acidic waters, high in conductivity and heavy metals. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) from the AML areas was pinpointed through acute testing with <i>Ceriodaphnia dubia</i> and </i>in situ</i> testing with the Asian clam, </i>Corbicula fluminea</i>. Active mining effluents from the Meigs #2 and Meigs #31 mines influenced the Ogden Run and Parker Run tributaries with conductivity values ranging from 2000 to 6000 μmhos/cm, respectively. The influence of the active mine effluents was observed down the mainstem from LCS6 to LCS10 in the form of high conductivity (~1200 μmhos/cm) and increased pH values (~8.0). Development of the enhancement plan began with the ranking of the ten mainstem stations and 17 tributary stations based on prioritization of impact parameters using an Ecotoxicological Rating (ETR) developed specifically for the Leading Creek watershed. The ETR included biological, toxicological, chemical and physical data to integrate a complete description of the impacts affecting the Leading Creek watershed. The 23 parameters in the ETR for the mainstem stations were; sediment depth, acidic pH, quantitative Invertebrate Community Index (ICI) scores, conductivity, clam <i>in situ</i> survival and growth, </i>Daphnia magna</i> and <i>Chironomus tentans</i> sediment toxicity, stormwater acute toxicity, qualitative invertebrate richness and Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera (EPT) abundance, percent AML area, concentrations of sodium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, chloride, nitrate/nitrite, ammonia, TSS, plus Qualitative Habitat Evaluation Index (QHEI) and United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) habitat scores. For the mainstem stations, low flow in the summer was substituted for quantitative ICI scores. The ETR provided a single numerical score of 200 points that allowed comparisons to be made between sites within Leading Creek and tributaries within the watershed. Stressors identified within the watershed and used in the ranking of sites included agricultural sedimentation, sedimentation from AML, poor water quality from AMD and multiple toxic inputs such as acute stormwater runoff. Remediation techniques and costs were described to address poor agricultural practices and designed to alleviate sedimentation within the mainstem. Remediation techniques for AMD were described but due to the enormous amount of AML within the Leading Creek watershed, costs and specific projects were deemed beyond the scope of this research project. / Ph. D.

Graduate school for most students can be quite stressful. When combined with the responsibility of being a spouse, parent, and/or employee, the stress is elevated. Research has indicated that the greatest area of discord for married graduate students and their nonstudent spouses is communication. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a relationship enhancement program on the marital adjustment of graduate students and their spouses. The sample consisted of 28 married graduate students and their nonstudent spouses. These couples were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups or a control group. Some of the treatment group participants received one-on-one training by a therapist certified in Relationship Enhancement (RE while others received the training through an RE self-study manual (Guerney, 1987). Marital adjustment was measured pre and post test to intervention by the Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test (Locke & Wallace, 1959). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant differences between treatment group and control group as measured by scores of marital adjustment. This study also provides suggestions for how institutions of higher education can provide support to married students and their spouses on college campuses. / Ph. D.

In recent years, dengue viral infection has become one of the most widely-spread mosquito-borne diseases in the world, with an estimated 50-100 million cases annually, resulting in 500,000 hospitalizations. Due to the nature of the immune response to each of the four serotypes of dengue virus, secondary infections of dengue put patients at higher risk for more severe infection as opposed to primary infections. The current hypothesis for this phenomenon is antibody-dependent enhancement, where strain-specific antibodies from the primary infection enhance infection by a heterologous serotype. To determine the mechanisms responsible for the increase in disease severity, we develop mathematical models of within-host virus-cell interaction, epidemiological models of virus transmission, and a combination of the within-host and between-host models. The main results of this thesis focus on the within-host model. We model the effects of antibody responses against primary and secondary virus strains. We find that secondary infections lead to a reduction of virus removal. This is slightly different than the current antibody-dependent enhancement hypothesis, which suggests that the rate of virus infectivity is higher during secondary infections due to antibody failure to neutralize the virus. We use the results from the within-host model in an epidemiological multi-scale model. We start by constructing a two-strain SIR model and vary the parameters to account for the effect of antibody-dependent enhancement. / Master of Science

Use of mobile equipment has increased exponentially over the last decade. As use becomes more widespread so too does the demand for new functionalities. The limited memory and computational power of many mobile devices has proven to be a challenge resulting in many innovative solutions and a number of new standards. Despite this, there is often a requirement for additional enhancement to improve quality. The focus of this thesis work has been to perform enhancement within two different areas; audio or speech encoding and video encoding/decoding. The audio enhancement section of this thesis addresses the well known problem in the GSM system with an interfering signal generated by the switching nature of TDMA cellular telephony. Two different solutions are given to suppress such interference internally in the mobile handset. The first method involves the use of subtractive noise cancellation employing correlators, the second uses a structure of IIR noth filters. Both solutions use control algorithms based on the state of the communication between the mobile handset and the base station. The video section of this thesis presents two post-filters and one pre-filter. The two post-filters are designed to improve visual quality of highly compressed video streams from standard, block-based video codecs by combating both blocking and ringing artifacts. The second post-filter also performs sharpening. The pre-filter is designed to increase the coding efficiency of a standard block based video codec. By introducing a pre-processing algorithm before the encoder, the amount of camera disturbance and the complexity of the sequence can be decreased, thereby increasing coding efficiency.