This thesis is in four parts and documents the redevelopment in the nineteenth century of the dilapidated University buildings of St. Andrews, Glasgow and King's and Marischal Colleges at Aberdeen. The period under examination dates from 1808 through to the Scotland (University) Act of 1889. The areas researched included the reasons why the University authorities failed to keep their buildings in good repair and the steps taken by their governing bodies to rectify the situation. It was found this problem was caused by a continuing yearly fall in their income and it was imperative that government funding was made available to alleviate the situation. Similarly researched in detail was the part played by the Office of Works in Scotland along with the private architects who were responsible for the rehabilitation of the old buildings and the erection of new purpose built accommodation. Part One looks at the historical background leading to the formation of the Scottish Office of Works in January, 1827 and its subsequent downgrading to that of a regional office of the Office of Woods and Forests in 1840. The Office of Woods and Forests was under the control of H.M. Treasury until 1857 when a major change took place with the appointment of a First Commissioner of Works responsible to parliament. Parts Two, Three and Four, examine the situation relevant to each individual University and College. Their protracted negotiations with the Treasury are highlighted, as are the subsequent delays in releasing the necessary funding, due in some measure to the bureaucracy of the period. The review of the building process is completed by examining the details surrounding the appointment of the architects and contractors involved in the construction of these new buildings. By mid century architects were having to cope with new technological advances, new materials, new methods of construction and new revived architectural styles which are dealt with in the text.

This dissertation is a response to the call for the application of sociological methods to the study of Gnosticism. It treats the economic and social origins of Gnosticism as a case study in the sociology of religious movements and situates Gnosticism in relation to the social and psychological dislocations produced by the expansion of the Roman Empire. In particular, it examines the transformation in the mode of production in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and early Roman periods, and correlates changes in economic conditions to changes in outlook and ideology amongst a stratum of upper-class, Hellenized but disenfranchised Jewish intellectuals. It traces many Gnostic themes to Jewish origins, and links the emphasis on individualism in Gnostic ethos, behaviour and social organization to the process of economic privatization in Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt. Finally, the dissertation addresses the dialectical relationship between culture and consciousness in terms of the anomie and fragmentation of the Egyptian Jewish community.

This thesis is concerned with the consideration of the H-theorem in a statistical manner and the information that may be derived from it as to the variation with time of an isolated mechanical system, and especially the approach to equilibrium. A historical introduction is given in which it shown how the need for such a statistical approach arose, and hoy the question of the behaviour of the fluctuations about the values of H predicted by the unrestricted H-theorem became important. The type of behaviour suggested by the Ehrenfests is quoted and to verify this it is found to be necessary to consider in detail actual models. Two classical models, the urn model and the wind-wood model, are considered, and then the procedure is generalized so as to include the whole class of models of the type consisting of two groups of particles, the one group moving and interacting with the members of the second group which are fixed. The transition probabilities and the rate of change of H, and the mean time of recurrence of a fluctuation are found for these models by considering the influence of fluctuations upon the Stosszahlansatz values for the numbers of collisions. The results confirm the postulates of the Ehrenfests. In assumptions common to the statistical treatment of collision processes.

Carbon dioxide fixation in excised barley roots has been investigated, particularly in relation to mineral ion absorption, using carbon-14 dioxide and radiochromatography. As unsatisfactory results were obtained in the determination of radioactivity were obtained in the determination of radioactivity in the ethanol-insoluble root residues, the ethanol-soluble activity was taken as the basis for carbon-14 assimilation. A linear zonation of fixation was demonstrated within the roots, the greatest uptake occurring in the region of the spices. Maintaining the root material in distilled water, rather than a nutrient solution, prior to exposure to carbon-14 dioxide, led to a marked increase in the carbon-14 incorporated in the eathol-soluble fraction. This increase was principally in malic acid. Mineral deficiency experiments, involving the omission of potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus in turn from the pretreatment medium, resulted in differences in the level of carbon dioxide fixation compared with that for the complete mineral solution. Results for the radioactivity of the 80% ethanol extracts expressed as percentages of that found in the complete mineral solution were 70.6, 137.33, and 96.11 respectively. Addition of glucose to the mineral solution resulted in a small increase in the level of carbon dioxide assimilation. The increase was in glutamic acid. Experiments using single salt solutions provide support for the hypothesis that carbon dioxide fixation is largely determined by organic acid formation in response to excess cation absorption. It is suggested that the relative activity of the labelled products may be related to the metabolic status of the roots. Malonate reduced carbon dioxide fixation, but the same range of labelled ethanol-soluble compounds was formed as in uninhibited roots, and there was no accumulation of labelled succinate. An experiment with cyanide was inconclusive, due to unsatisfactory experimental conditions.

This thesis presents an empirical analysis of the depth cue of motion parallax. The history of research in this area is described and some recent computational models are outlined which show that parallax information can theoretically provide accurate information about the depth structure of the environment. In contrast to previous empirical work, which failed to demonstrate that motion parallax could be used effectively, the experiments reported in this thesis show that it can be an accurate source of information about depth structure. The characteristics of the processing underlying the use of motion parallax were investigated. Sensitivity to depth surfaces specified by relative motion was high, and it varied as a function of the spatial rate of change of depth. Moreover, the sensitivity function was similar to that measured for stereoscopic depth surfaces. The finding of close similarities between motion parallax and stereoscopic depth was a major theme of the thesis. Strong negative aftereffects followed prolonged viewing of depth surfaces specified by either cue and, in addition, large simultaneous contrast effects were also found. Here, the perceived depth of one area was affected by the depth of the surrounding area. These findings suggest that depth processing from both parallax and stereopsis involves extensive spatial interactions. A model of depth processing was suggested where the basic mechanisms had extended receptive fields which extracted changes in depth, specified either by relative motion or disparity, across local areas. The presence of anisotropies in the perception of depth surfaces showed that there was a differential sensitivity to particular local patterns of relative motion or disparity, which might be due to an asymmetric organisation within depth receptive fields. Finally, the motion parallax and stereoscopic depth processing systems were found to interact, indicating that information from the two sources might come together at some stage. Overall, the empirical findings emphasised the importance of extracting information about the local structure of depth surfaces rather than the depths of individual points.

Chapter One introduces the theory which is based on three postulates derived from pragmatism, empiricism and constructivism respectively. Veridical perception is seen not as reflecting the world as it is in some absolute sense, but as providing guidance for effective action. Its ability to do this depends on its relationship to active touch. This relies on their both being forms of action, i.e. they both consist of the operation of schemata which are at the same time guides for action and products of action. The second chapter relates how versions of these postulates have appeared, singly or in pairs, in previous theories especially those of Berkeley, Kant and Schelling. Then MacMurray's theory, which embodies all three postulates is introduced, and this is related to Gibson's theory. Chapter Three discusses how the key terms in the theory, image, percept and schema, relate to each other, and argues that they all reflect the same underlying psychological process. Chapter Four is concerned with dynamic and hedonic aspects, with how perception relates to motivation and feeling. Conventional theories see any such relation as external and associative while those based on perceptual schemata allow both external and internal relationships. These different sorts of theory are compared over a wide range of phenomena. Only the schemata based theory can account for all of the effects. Chapter Five starts with a brief discussion of the limitations of information processing type models in psychology, particularly with respect to dynamic aspects. With these in mind, it goes on to develop an outline model. Construction of the model draws attention to two important aspects of the theory; the non-existence of a pure metric representation and the lack of any strictly causal link between retinal stimulation and percept. Chapter Six examines the literature on adaptation to optical re-arrangement, a convenient method of studying the relationship between spatial vision and touch which is a key issue for the theory. While the crucial re-arrangement is impossible to produce, the weight of evidence supports the sort of theory proposed here. Chapter Seven compares this theory to others, particularly Neisser's, and suggests other areas of application in both visual perception and general psychology.

The interocular transfer of simultaneously presented visual discriminations was examined in the pigeon (Columba livia) in several experimental situations. When trained monocularly on a jumping stand, there was no evidence of transfer to the other eye-hemisphere system of either pattern or colour discriminations using retraining and reversal learning measures as well as testing. This failure was not due to any obscuring of transfer consequent upon switching the occluder from one eye to the other, nor was there any suggestion of even a small amount of transfer of information from the trained eye to the untrained eye with extensive overtraining and decoupling trials. Binocular training on the jumping stand also revealed that some of the pigeons were learning a discrimination with only one eye in spite of the opportunity to learn with both eyes. When trained in a key pecking task, pigeons demonstrate perfect transfer. Testing revealed that this discrepancy in results is not due to the number of trials given in the two situations, to separation of the stimuli over a greater distance or by a partition, nor to the distance at which the pigeon makes a decision about which stimulus to approach. When the function of the retinal locus of the stimuli was examined, evidence was found in the literature and in my observations that the pigeons were using a different part of the retina when scanning the stimulus display in a key pecking task than on the jumping stand, even though the stimuli in the two situations were located in the same position relative to the bird's head. Specifically, in the key pecking tasks the red area of the retina, which serves the lower binocular portion of the retina, is used. On the jumping stand this area is not used to scan the stimuli. It was then possible to demonstrate a failure of transfer in a key pecking task and successful transfer on the jumping stand by simply manipulating whether the red area was used in scanning the stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of a consequence of binocular convergence from the red area, and when there is a failure of transfer, when the red area is not used, or prevented from being used, the stimuli fall within the monocular field where there is no necessity of later convergence from the two inputs. Active inhibition mechanisms also might serve to lateralize input to one hemisphere.

This dissertation is concerned with airport ground network operations and runway design problems. An aircraft landing simulation model is proposed to predict landing aircraft operations in airfield networks considering gate location and taxiway network information. By using the integrated simulation results, an improved dynamic programming model is established to solve the runway exit location problem. The simulation model uses aircraft kinematic functions coupled with individual parameters to describe the landing process. A multiobjective optimization and a shortest path algorithm are used to predict the aircraft exit choice and expected taxiway path in a runway-taxiway network. By recognizing pilot motivation during the landing process, several influencing factors such as terminal location, traffic density, runway and weather conditions are considered in the aircraft landing simulation. Random variables such as aircraft approach speed, deceleration rate and runway exit speed are created to represent the stochastic aircraft landing behavior by using a Monte Carlo sampling technique. The model results, with some simplifications, could be used to solve runway exit location problem by providing the expected distribution of aircraft landing distances and aircraft runway occupancy times. With real-time input data, the model could also provide information on aircraft exit choice, runway occupancy times and shortest taxiway path to an assigned terminal location for both the pilot and the air traffic controller in a ground traffic automatic control system. The dynamic programming model is based on previous research results with substantial improvements. Instead of only focusing on the runway configuration, the proposed model recognizes airline terminal location as an influence factor in the runway exit location problem and introduces this influence in the optimization procedure. An interactive computer program has been developed in C language on a RISC 6000 workstation to perform all these tasks. The choice of a workstation platform improves the performance of the dynamic programming algorithm when compared to personal computer solutions. / Ph. D.

Die G8 besitzt aus chinesischer Sicht große Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten. Verglichen mit anderen zwischenstaatlichen Organisationen hat die G8 einzigartige Vorteile angesichts ihrer Macht und Flexibilität. Um ihren Einfluss und ihre Kontrolle über die Weltangelegenheiten zu verstärken, sollte die Gruppe reformiert und erweitert werden. China ist gegenwärtig nicht an einem Beitritt zur G8 interessiert, wohl aber an einer engen Zusammenarbeit. Langfristig ist es allerdings nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis China der G8 beitreten wird. / From the Chinese point of view, the G8 will have a great potential development space in the future. Compared with other intergovernmental organizations, the G8 has its unique advantages in view of power and flexibility. In order to improve its influence and control over the world affairs, the group should be extended and reformed. At the moment China is not interested in getting a member of G8, it is concentrating on close cooperation. But in the long run, it is only a matter of time for China to join the G8.

Improvements in soft fruit cultivars have been achieved by the selection of superior genotypes through plant breeding. Limitations imposed by plant breeding, led to work being initiated into the development of a gene vector technique for soft fruit, to permit improvement without altering their overall genetic makeup. Little research has been carried out in this area with perennial crops, cultivars of which are highly heterozygous, their genetic structure being maintained by vegetative propagation. Probably the most successful method of transformation available involves the use of the soil bacterium Agrobacterium. This bacterium is manipulated to contain the gene of interest, and used to infect small explants of the genotype which, can result in gene transfer to some cells of the explant. These transformed cells are induced to regenerate whole plants, which are assessed to select those containing the gene of interest. A transformation system suitable for use in three soft fruit species (Rubus. Ribes and Fraaaria spp.) was developed. Initially these species and Vaccinium spp. were inoculated with a range of wild type Agrobacterium isolates to demonstrate the ability of the isolates to infect. All but one isolate was capable of effecting gene transfer (to some degree) into the plants, which was demonstrated by the production of disease symptoms. Whole plant inoculation was not useful for Agrobacterium transformation, as only the cells at the site of infection contained the foreign DNA. Regeneration techniques were developed for each species, so that the infected cell(s) would regenerate to form whole plants containing the foreign DNA in every cell. With Rubus spp., both leaf disc and internodal segment explants were induced to regenerate whole plants. Generally a larger number of internodal segments than leaf discs regenerated, though the productivity of plantlets from a leaf disc was greater. Cultivars differed in their ability to regenerate. For blackcurrant, an internodal segment system was developed, and for strawberry, leaf disc regeneration was achieved. In Vaccinium spp. regeneration occurred using leaf material. Using these regeneration techniques, transformation experiments were initiated using both the Neomycin phosphotransferase II (NPT II) and the Beta- Glucuronidase (GUS) marker genes. Once putative transformants were selected on kanamycin medium, dot blot, fluorometric, histochemical, and Southern hybridisation assays were carried out. The GUS gene proved especially useful in the identification of transformants, providing a reliable, simple, quick and inexpensive marker gene. The development of transformation systems in soft fruit species has led to experiments being initiated for plant improvement, by the insertion of specific genes, notably genes conferring virus and disease resistance on Rubus and strawberry plants by Agrobacterium.