Thesis (M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Rudolph P. Darken, Joseph A. Sullivan. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77). Also available online.

This essay focuses on the idea of the inner landscape as a source of artistic and creative freedom in the mind of the protagonist of the novel Fear of flying, Isadora Wing. Isadora wishes to be a writer but is hindered by the imposing wills of family, society, cultural norms and her own feelings of inadequacy. In order to free herself from these wills she goes through a cathartic journey which involves an extra-marital affair and culminates in finding peace of mind. This essay analyses how the novel portrays how one can be a creative force in spite of conflicting impositions that would stop one from being a writer.

CanX-4/-5 is a formation flying technology demonstration mission that shall demonstrate sub-meter formation tracking control. The key to this precision control is carrier phase differential GPS state estimation, which enables centimeter-level relative state estimation. In this thesis, the formation flying controller design is reviewed in detail, and an innovative closed-loop formation reconfiguration strategy is presented. In addition, the designs of both coarse- and fine-mode relative state estimators are presented. Formation flying simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control and coarse estimation. Furthermore, hardware tests are performed to test the computational efficiency of the control algorithms and to validate the fine-mode relative navigation filter.

CanX-4/-5 is a formation flying technology demonstration mission that shall demonstrate sub-meter formation tracking control. The key to this precision control is carrier phase differential GPS state estimation, which enables centimeter-level relative state estimation. In this thesis, the formation flying controller design is reviewed in detail, and an innovative closed-loop formation reconfiguration strategy is presented. In addition, the designs of both coarse- and fine-mode relative state estimators are presented. Formation flying simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control and coarse estimation. Furthermore, hardware tests are performed to test the computational efficiency of the control algorithms and to validate the fine-mode relative navigation filter.

Thesis (MEd (Human Resources Studies))--University of South Australia, 1995

Abstract Pteropid bats are species of zoonotic significance and are known to be reservoir hosts of many viral diseases recently emerged in Asia and Australia. The transfer of these organisms from bats into terrestrial hosts resulted in lethal illnesses in humans and animals. Implementing attentive strategies for the detection and monitoring of these organisms is essential to the protection of humans, animals and the balance of the global economy. Unfortunately the paucity of information on these mammals’ immune system and the absence of diagnostic tools for the detection and for the studying of the humoral response in these animals disengage us from responding promptly when such outbreaks occur and prevent us from describing the possible underling causes that may be responsible for the absence of symptoms in bats infected with such organisms. It was assumed that flying foxes have immunoglobulin like molecules that provide humoral response and are involved in mediating secondary effector functions such as complement fixation and activation of other components of the cellular response in a similar manner as it occurs in humans and other mammals. The aims of this study which include immunoglobulin isotype identification, purification and characterisation as well as generation of reagents that are immunoglobulin class specific, provide the primary platform that should enable us to begin examining these questions. IgG was purified from the black flying fox’s serum by affinity chromatography using Protein G and Protein A. Protein L was ineffective in purifying any antibody from the bat serum. The heavy chain of IgG was also purified by gel electroelution. IgG was digested with papain to yield Fab and Fc fragments. The identity of the bat IgG was confirmed by N-terminal sequencing of the heavy chain and light chain of immunoglobulins separated by SDS-PAGE and by N-terminal sequencing of Fc and Fc' fragments. IgM has also been purified using methods that have not been previously explored to our knowledge. These methods consisted of the purification of Fab specific antibodies from antisera generated against Fab, and using these antibodies to capture other immunoglobulin classes in samples that had been previously enriched by classical fractionation methods. Antisera against the whole IgG molecule, Fc, Fab, IgG heavy chain and IgM heavy chain have been produced in rabbits and tested by Western blot and ELISA. The antisera against the whole IgG molecule and against the Fc were also utilized to detect antibodies to Nipah virus in bats that were found positive to Serum Neutralisation Test. Failure to identify the bat IgA in the bat serum poses questions on the presence, abundance and functional significance of such molecule in bats. The tools that were generated in this study recognise immunoglobulin isotypes, which enabled us to detect and measure antibodies and will allow the study of the humoral response in infected bats to a large extent. Tedious approaches routinely adopted for the purification of antibodies involve a series of pre-fractionation steps or affinity chromatography which rely on the use of expensive immobilised novel or partially characterised ligands, with no guarantee of affinity for the immunoglobulin isotype of interest. The method adopted for immunoglubulin isotype purification described in this study proved to be an effective, reasonably quick and economic solution for immunoglubulin isotype purification from any mammalian species.

Thesis (MEd (Human Resources Studies))--University of South Australia, 1995

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2002. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 70).

Although scale is consistently identified as the central problem in ecology, empirical examinations of its importance in ecological research are rare and fundamental concepts remain either largely misunderstood or incorrectly applied. Due to the mobile and wide-ranging nature of wildlife populations, species-habitat modeling is a field in which much proliferation of multi-scale studies has occurred, and thus provides a good arena within which to test both scale theory and its application. Insufficient examination of a relevant breadth of the scale continuum could be an important constraint in all multi-scale investigations, limiting our understanding of scalar concepts overall. Here I examine several concepts of ecological scale by studying free-ranging populations of northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus), purported to be a keystone species in northern forests. Coarse-grain digital forest coverage revealed that flying squirrels in the boreal and foothills of Alberta were not conifer specialists, rather forest generalists regarding stand type and age. Lack of coarse-grain scale effects led me to examine fine-grain data, including an assessment of scale domains using a novel continuum approach. Fine-grain data revealed important scale-related biases of trapping versus telemetry, namely that, at fine-grain scales, different habitat associations could be generated from the same data set based on methods alone. Then, focusing on spatial extent, I develop a true multi-scalar approach examining scale domains. First, I quantify only forest attributes across multiple extents, and demonstrate unpredictable scale effects on independent variables often used in species-habitat models. Second, including both independent (habitat) and dependent (squirrel telemetry) variables in the same approach, I demonstrate that the relative ranking and strength-of-evidence among different species-habitat models change based on scale, and this effect is different between genders and among life-history stage (i.e., males, females, and dispersing juveniles). I term this the “continuum approach”, the results of which question the validity of many published species-habitat models. Lastly, I attempt to clarify why existing models should be scrutinized by reviewing common rationales used in scale choice (almost always arbitrary), outlining differences between “observational scale” and the commonly cited “orders of resource selection”, and making a clear distinction between multi-scale versus multi-design ecological studies. / Graduate