This thesis will examine the surprising and delightful similarities between Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Eliza R. Snow's letters to the Woman's Exponent published in a book titled Correspondence of Palestine Tourists (1875). Snow traveled abroad from 1872-1873, five years after Twain went abroad in 1867 and three years after The Innocents Abroad was published. She clearly states in her early letters that she was reading Twain and his influence is apparent in her letters. A careful look at her letters will also show that they are not merely an imitation of Twain. Snow takes on a Twainian style to write for her audience, the Latter-day Saint women readers of the Woman's Exponent in Salt Lake City.Reading Snow's letters alongside Twain's The Innocents Abroad is beneficial in understanding the power and influence a popular text can have not only on other texts, but also on how writers describe their personal experiences. Marielle Maco states: 'Works take their place in ordinary life, leaving their marks and exerting a lasting power' 'Ways of Reading, Modes of Being,' 213). The lasting power of Twain's work is clearly shown here in Snow's letters.

<p>Behaviour occurs in time, and precise timing in the range of seconds and fractions of seconds is for most living organisms necessary for successful interaction with the environment. Our ability to time discrete actions and to predict events on the basis of prior events indicates the existence of an internal timing mechanism. The nature of this mechanism provides essential constraints on models of the functional organisation of the brain. </p><p>The present work indicates that there are discontinuities in the function of time close to 1 s and 1.4 s, both in the amount of drift in a series of produced intervals (Study I) and in the detectability of drift in a series of sounds (Study II). The similarities across different tasks further suggest that action and perceptual judgements are governed by the same (kind of) mechanism. Study III showed that series of produced intervals could be characterised by different amounts of positive fractal dependency related to the aforementioned discontinuities. </p><p>In conjunction with other findings in the literature, these results suggest that timing of intervals up to a few seconds is strongly dependent on previous intervals and on the duration to be timed. This argues against a clock-counter mechanism, as proposed by scalar timing theory, according to which successive intervals are random and the size of the timing error conforms to Weber's law. </p><p>A functional model is proposed, expressed in an autoregressive framework, which consists of a single-interval timer with error corrective feedback. The duration-specificity of the proposed model is derived from the order of error correction, as determined by a semi-flexible temporal integration span. </p>

In this dissertation, I propose that network theory offers a useful frame for informing mathematics education. Mathematical understanding, like the discipline of formal mathematics within which it is subsumed, possesses attributes characteristic of complex systems. As the techniques of network theorists are often used to explore such forms, a network model provides a novel and productive way to interpret individual comprehension of mathematics. A network structure for mathematical understanding can be found in cognitive mechanisms presented in the theory of embodied mathematics described by Lakoff and Nez. Specifically, conceptual domains are taken as the nodes of a network and conceptual metaphors as the connections among them. Examination of this metaphoric network of mathematics reveals the scale-free topology common to complex systems. Patterns of connectivity in a network determine its dynamic behavior. Scale-free systems like mathematical understanding are inherently vulnerable, for cascading failures, where misunderstanding one concept can lead to the failure of many other ideas, may occur. Adding more connections to the metaphoric network decreases the likelihood of such a collapse in comprehension. I suggest that an individuals mathematical understanding may be made more robust by ensuring each concept is developed using metaphoric links that supply patterns of thought from a variety of domains. Ways of making this a focus of classroom instruction are put forth, as are implications for curriculum and professional development. A need for more knowledge of metaphoric connections in mathematics is highlighted. To exemplify how such research might be carried out, and with the intent of substantiating ideas presented in this dissertation, I explore a small part of the proposed metaphoric network around the concept of EXPONENTIATION. Using collaborative discussion, individual interviews and literature, a search for representations that provide varied ways of making sense of EXPONENTIATION is carried out. Examination of the physical and mathematical roots of these conceptualizations leads to the identification of domains that can be linked to EXPONENTIATION.

Behaviour occurs in time, and precise timing in the range of seconds and fractions of seconds is for most living organisms necessary for successful interaction with the environment. Our ability to time discrete actions and to predict events on the basis of prior events indicates the existence of an internal timing mechanism. The nature of this mechanism provides essential constraints on models of the functional organisation of the brain. The present work indicates that there are discontinuities in the function of time close to 1 s and 1.4 s, both in the amount of drift in a series of produced intervals (Study I) and in the detectability of drift in a series of sounds (Study II). The similarities across different tasks further suggest that action and perceptual judgements are governed by the same (kind of) mechanism. Study III showed that series of produced intervals could be characterised by different amounts of positive fractal dependency related to the aforementioned discontinuities. In conjunction with other findings in the literature, these results suggest that timing of intervals up to a few seconds is strongly dependent on previous intervals and on the duration to be timed. This argues against a clock-counter mechanism, as proposed by scalar timing theory, according to which successive intervals are random and the size of the timing error conforms to Weber's law. A functional model is proposed, expressed in an autoregressive framework, which consists of a single-interval timer with error corrective feedback. The duration-specificity of the proposed model is derived from the order of error correction, as determined by a semi-flexible temporal integration span.

The amount and morphology of the graphite phase largely controls the resulting properties of cast iron. For instance, in flake graphite cast irons the mechanical properties are low while the thermal conductivity is high. This is in contrast with spheroidal graphite cast irons where the mechanical properties are high and the thermal conductivity is low. These differences are due to the different graphite morphologies and must be accounted for in the design work and material selection of cast iron components. In this work the influence of the graphite phase on the elastic and plastic deformation behaviour of cast irons has been studied. The material grades studied originate from castings for marine diesel engine piston rings with different chemical analyses. Two groups of pearlitic cast iron materials were studied; one with differences in graphite morphology and one with grey irons that differed in graphite content. For these different material grades the mechanical properties were correlated to microstructural parameters. In addition to standard uniaxial tensile tests, acoustic emission measurements were used for the study of deformation. When studying the modulus of elasticity of the cast iron it was found that the modulus of elasticity of the inherent graphite phase depends on the roundness of the graphite particles and is due to the strong anisotropy of the graphite phase. A linear correlation between nodularity and the modulus of elasticity of the graphite phase was derived. This correlation made it possible to account for the anisotropy of the graphite phase in the model used. By applying the linear function when modelling the effective modulus of elasticity, a high accuracy between experimental and theoretical values was achieved. Another factor affecting the elastic response when subjecting a cast iron component to tensile load was found to be the plastic deformation that actually occurs at very low strains for all of the studied cast iron grades. It was observed that the plastic deformation in the low strain elastic region, quantified by using acoustic emission measurements, increased linearly with decreasing modulus of elasticity. These measurements showed that the amount of plastic deformation in the elastic region was largely controlled by the graphite morphology. It was concluded that as the roundness of the graphite particles increases, the plastic deformation activity in the elastic region decreases. The plastic deformation activity continued linearly into the pronounced plastic region of the tensile tests. A decrease in roundness or increase in graphite fraction resulted in an increase of the amount of plastic deformation and the strain hardening exponent. A dependence between strength coefficient and graphite fraction was observed. Models for the flow curves for pearlitic cast irons were developed and shown to accurately reproduce the observed experimental curves. The surveys performed and conclusions from this thesis will be helpful in the design of new cast iron materials.

Hurst exponent and variance are two quantities that often characterize real-life, highfrequency observations. We develop the method for simultaneous estimation of a timechanging Hurst exponent H(t) and constant scale (variance) parameter C in a multifractional Brownian motion model in the presence of white noise based on the asymptotic behavior of the local variation of its sample paths. We also discuss the accuracy of the stable and simultaneous estimator compared with a few selected methods and the stability of computations that use adapted wavelet filters. Multifractals have become popular as flexible models in modeling real-life data of high frequency. We developed a method of testing whether the data of high frequency is consistent with monofractality using meaningful descriptors coming from a wavelet-generated multifractal spectrum. We discuss theoretical properties of the descriptors, their computational implementation, the use in data mining, and the effectiveness in the context of simulations, an application in turbulence, and analysis of coding/noncoding regions in DNA sequences. The wavelet thresholding is a simple and effective operation in wavelet domains that selects the subset of wavelet coefficients from a noised signal. We propose the selection of this subset in a semi-supervised fashion, in which a neighbor structure and classification function appropriate for wavelet domains are utilized. The decision to include an unlabeled coefficient in the model depends not only on its magnitude but also on the labeled and unlabeled coefficients from its neighborhood. The theoretical properties of the method are discussed and its performance is demonstrated on simulated examples.

Das Ziel der Arbeit war es, Skalenverhalten und Lösungseigenschaften von flexiblen Dendrimeren als Modell für hochverzweigte Polymere zu untersuchen. Als Untersuchungsmethode wurde die gepulste Feldgradienten NMR (PFG-NMR) eingesetzt, um das hydrodynamische Verhalten der Dendrimere in Lösung zu erforschen. Aus der Konzentrationsabhängigkeit des Diffusionskoeffizienten konnte abgeleitet werden, dass das Verhalten der PAMAM-Dendrimere dem von Proteinen ähnelt, die Dendrimere also starr und globulär sind. Um die Abhängigkeit des hydrodynamischen Radius von der Molmasse zu untersuchen, kamen Lösungen von mehreren Generationen PAMAM-Dendrimeren mit verschiedenen Endgruppen zum Einsatz. Mit PFG-NMR wurden die Diffusionskoeffizienten bestimmt, aus denen die hydrodynamischen Radien nach der Stokes-Einstein-Beziehung berechnet wurden. Ein Skalenansatz lieferte die beste Beschreibung der Daten für alle drei untersuchten Systeme. Die ermittelten Skalenexponenten waren u = 3,7 für alle untersuchten PAMAM-Dendrimere. Dies bedeutet, dass deren Wachstum im dreidimensionalen Raum begrenzt ist, da der Skalenexponent einen Wert größer drei annimmt. Die Art der Endgruppen hatte in diesem Fall keinen erkennbaren Einfluss auf das Skalenverhalten. An Lysin-Dendrimeren wurde der Einfluss der Kernfunktionalität auf den Skalenexponenten untersucht. Die Lysin-Dendrimere standen als Monodendren (Kernfunktionalität, KF=1) und als Dendrimere mit einem Thiacalixaren-Kern (Thia1: KF=2, Thia2: KF=4) zur Verfügung. Die Skalenexponenten waren folgende: Für das Monodendron war u = 2,0, für Thia1 war u = 2,3 und Thia2 hatte einen Skalenexponent von u = 3,9. Da die Dendren in allen drei Fällen identisch waren, muss dieser Unterschied durch den Kern begründet sein. Weiter wurde die effektive Ladung von PAMAM-COONa G1,5 Dendrimeren in verdünnter D2O-Lösung als Funktion des pH-Werts mit Hilfe von Elektrophorese-NMR untersucht. Dabei änderte diese sich von Zeff = -5 e bei pH 12,6 zu Zeff = +5 e bei pH 1,8.

Diese Arbeit berichtet über die Planung und den Aufbau eines neuen Viskosimeters und über Viskositätsuntersuchungen einiger metallischer Systeme. Diese letzteren Messungen wurden mit einem vorhandenen Viskosimeter gemacht, in dem kein besseres Vakuum als 10^(-3)mbar und keine höhere Temperatur als 1430K erreicht werden kann. Das beste Vakuum und die maximale erreichbare Temperatur in dem neuen Viskosimeter sind 10^(-6)mbar bzw. 1870K. Diese beiden Grundbedingungen ermöglichen die Viskositätsmessung metallischer Systeme, die aktive Elemente wie Al, Mg und P enthalten oder/und einen höheren Schmelzpunkt besitzen. Mit dem Drei-Zonen-Ofen erlaubt die neue Apparatur auch ein schnelleres Homogenisieren der zu untersuchenden Schmelze, besonders der monotektischen Systeme. Der Einfluß der Temperatur des Torsionsdrahtes und der Anfangsphase der Schwingung auf die Genauigkeit der Viskostätsmessung wurden analysiert und entsprechende Verbesserungen vorgeschlagen. Die untersuchten Systeme sind das Zn-Pb basierte ternäre System, die monotektischen Systeme Ag-Te und Li-Na, das Verbindungssystem Sb-Zn, die halbleitenden Cd-Te Legierungen und Schaummaterialien ZACT und ZACM. / Viscosity of metallic melts and its precise measurement This thesis reports the design and the construction of a new oscillating cup viscometer and the viscosity investigation of several metallic systems. The measurements were carried out with an existing viscometer by which one could not get better vacuum than 10^(-3)mbar or higher temperature than 1430K. With the new apparatus the best vacuum of 10^(-6)mbar and the highest temperature of 1870K can be reached. These two basic conditions permit the measurement of systems which contain active elements such as Al, Mg and P and/or have very hight melting points. The construction of the three-zone furnace in the new viscometer allows the acceleration of the homogenising process, which is especially important for monotectic systems. The influences of the temperature of the torsion thread and the initial oscillating phase on the accuracy of viscosity measurement were analysed and the corresponding solutions were put forward. The investigated systems are the Zn-Pb based ternary system, the monotectic systems Ag-Te and Li-Na, the Sb-Zn system which contains compounds in the solid phases, the semiconducting Cd-Te alloys and the foaming materials ZACT and ZACM.

No description available.

VHF står för "Very High Frequency" och är ett frekvensband som ligger i området 30 - 300 MHz. Maritim VHF är standard för Sjöfartsverket och fungerar över hela världen. Det är ett kommunikationssystem som bidrar till ökad säkerhet och kan rädda liv på sjön. Andra vanliga kommunikationssystem som mobiltelefoni fungerar inte tillförlitligt. Idag fungerar mobiltelefoni i stora delar av skärgården och längs kusterna men när det gäller kommunikation mellan fartyg längre ut till havs är den maritima VHF-kommunikationen överlägsen. Sjöfartsverket driver för sitt eget och kunders behov ett mobilradionätverk kallat kustradionätverket. Radiotrafiken i nätet sker både på Very High Frequency (VHF) och Medium frequency (MF). VHF-systemet är ett internationellt system som bland annat används till att kommunicera till sjöss och den trafiken befinner sig i frekvensbandet 155.5 - 162.025 MHz. Inom VHF-bandet finns det 55 kanaler. Kanalerna vid kustradiostationen kallas för duplexkanaler och innebär att kustradiostationerna sänder och tar emot signaler på två olika frekvenser. Radioutbredningen hos antennen som är installerad på basstationen har riktverkan i vissa riktningar och dämpningar i andra. Detta kan ses i strålningsdiagrammet under kapitlet "Täckningsmodell" och avsnittet antennen. Andra faktorer som kan påverka radioutbredningen är förluster i basstationenssystemet, topologin hos området mellan sändare och mottagare samt väderberoende utbredningsegenskaper. Genom att hitta de tänkbara faktorer som påverkar signalutbredningen kan en täckningsmodell förutses. Det är förluster som finns i basstationen, radiolänken samt förluster vid mottagarantennen.