Purpose: Hyper-reflective superficial cells were an unexpected finding while examining the corneal epithelium using confocal microscopy (CM), during an MSc thesis conducted in 2006 at the University of Waterloo, Canada. The author1 suggested that the appearance of these hyper-reflective cells could be associated with solution induced corneal staining (SICS) that was also observed in those participants who had manifested these hyper-reflective cells. However, this hypothesis has not been reported in the literature. This thesis aimed to investigate variables that could possibly predict the appearance of hyper-reflective superficial cells. These investigated variables were the effect of: contact lenses, contact lens solutions, lens/solution combinations, long-term use of certain contact lenses and solutions, age, dry eye symptom, topical anaesthetics and sodium fluorescein. In addition to this, the normal superficial epithelium of controls was defined. Methods: CM images of the superficial epithelium were obtained during the various experiments from: 32 non-contact lens wearing participants, 18 post-menopausal participants symptomatic of dry eye and 18 post-menopausal age-matched asymptomatic women and 147 adapted soft contact lens wearers. For one experiment CM was performed with the contact lens in situ, making the use of a topical anaesthetic unnecessary. Superficial cellular appearance of CM images was graded using a custom grading scale. Hyper-reflective cells were counted. Corneal staining was assessed using sodium fluorescein. Results: Results obtained during the various experiments revealed that hyper-reflective cells predominately appeared with the use of a specific lens/solution combination. Also, the number of hyper-reflective cells peaked after two hours of lens wear. It was also shown that when hyper-reflective cells occurred during an experiment, not every participant who was exposed to that specific lens/solution combination manifested hyper-reflective cells. Also, a great deal of inter-subject variability in observed numbers of hyper-reflective cells was noted. Conclusion: In conclusion, this thesis established that the hyper-reflective cells that were observed by Harvey were reproducible and may co-occur with corneal staining induced by a specific lens/solution interaction

The detection for phase locking in a forced oscillator with dual attractors and ill-defined phase structure is hard until a quantitative approach was constructed for detecting phase locking via stroboscopic method. We study the route to weak phase locking in a chaotic system ¡§Chua oscillator¡¨ with complex attractor structure by analyzing the stroboscopic points. The onset of weak phase locking detected by using this statistical approach and the critical coupling strength calculated by conditional Lyapunov exponent are matched well. Detailed structure of phase locking intensity is described by the Arnold tongue diagram. Moreover, we apply this approach on three hyper-chaotic systems with multi-scroll attractor, including hyper-chaotic Rössler system, hyper-chaotic Lorenz system, and modified MCK oscillator. The weak phase locking between hyper-chaotic system and a periodic or a chaotic driving force is observable following the condition of stroboscopic point concentration.

The so-called heuristics have been widely used in solving combinatorial optimization problems because they provide a simple but effective way to find an approximate solution. These technologies are very useful for users who do not need the exact solution but who care very much about the response time. For every existing heuristic algorithm has its pros and cons, a hyper-heuristic clustering algorithm based on the diversity detection and improvement detection operators to determine when to switch from one heuristic algorithm to another is presented to improve the clustering result in this paper. Several well-known datasets are employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can provide a better clustering result than the state-of-the-art heuristic algorithms compared in this paper, namely, k-means, simulated annealing, tabu search, and genetic k-means algorithm.

Abstract The first hyperpolarizability(£]) of five charge-transfer molecules are determined using the hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) technique at two excitation wavelengths : 1064nm and 1907nm. The 1064nm excitation wavelength is derived from a Nd: YAG pulsed laser, and the 1907nm excitation wavelength is obtained by shifting the 1064nm laser light by stimulated Raman scattering of pressurized H2 gas. Four of the five samples contains thiophene and thiazole are synthetized by Prof. Shu Ching-Fong at the National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) and the other sample is synthetized by Prof. Hong, Jin-Long at the National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU). The measured £] values are used to calculate the intrinsic molecular hyperpolarizabilities using the two-level model previously developed by Oudar and Chemla. The results are related to molecular structure.

The technique of hyper-Rayleigh scattering is employed to measure the first molecular hyperpolarizabilities£]of nonlinear optical chromophores provided by Industrial Technology Research Institute. £]0. In the thesis, the effect of the molecular structure and the solvent on the hyperpolarizabilities will be discussed further.

<p>Virtualisering av servrar är på frammarsch och ser ut att bli ett mer och mer frekvent inslag i datacenter världen över. När virtualisering ska införas i en organisation eller företag är det därför viktigt att veta om sina behov och därifrån sedan välja en virtualiseringslösning som passar.Denna rapport presenterar en jämförelse av de tre hypervisorer som är ledande på marknaden för virtualisering; VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer och Microsoft Hyper-V. Den första delen av jämförelsen innefattar granskning av funktionalitet hos hypervisorerna, så som stöd för gästoperativsystem och hårdvarustöd. Den andra delen av jämförelsen mäter prestandan på de tre hypervisorerna på gästoperativsystemen Windows Server 2008, Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 och Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS.Prestandatester utförs med SysBench och de komponenter som testas är processor, RAM-minne och hårddisk. Resultaten visar på varierande resultat för de olika hårdvarukomponenterna på de olika systemen som testats.</p>

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The gay male community has traditionally been a marginalized population struggling for acceptance within the larger international frame. However since the development of gay magazine publications in the 1990s images of the gay male have been more widely spread throughout mainstream society. This study explores how race, age, body image, and sexuality are stereotyped to represent one standard image of the gay male as found in Western gay magazine publications. This is a quantitative media analysis, examining images, covers and advertisements in gay male magazines over a period of four years. By engaging in relevant theoretical discourses, empirical evidence, and scholarly research, this study critically analyzes how the gay identity is mediated by both the mainstream and gay publications. Results from the analysis points to wide spread discrimination within gay publications targeted at all gay minorities, which could have detrimental effects on the gay community.

This work gives the overview of particularities of parallel programming for the personal computer and the observation of the possibilities and advantages of the Hyper-Threading technology and new Pentium 4 processors. The work proves that the creation of the Hyper-Threading technology and dual-core processors helps to make parallel computing more available for the usual personal computer. Parallel programming becomes not only the way of solving difficult tasks but gives a real possibility to speed up the work of personal computer and to use its hardware resources more effectively. The work gives the review of the possibilities of creation of parallel programs by using OpenMP standard and particularities of the application of the set of SSE2 processor commands. The results of practical tests are given. They indicate that the floating point computing is more effective without using of multiple threads and Hyper-Treading technology shows best results working with different types of processes or working with new processor possibilities.

With a precipitation falling to as low as 100 mm/yr, a high rate of non-renewable groundwater depletion, a growing population resulting in increased food demand and a lack of concern for water management, it is crucial to use all available tools to conserve water. One of the most important factors related to water management is crop evapotranspiration. This research examines five crop evapotranspiration models (one combination model, three radiation based models and one temperature based model) under hyper arid environment at practical field level. These models have been evaluated and calibrated using an alfalfa weekly water balance in 2010. The calibrated models have been evaluated and validated using wheat and potatoes on a weekly water balance, respectively. Based on the results and discussion, FAO-56 PM proved to be superior at estimating crop evapotranspiration while radiation and temperature based models underestimated evapotranspiration and would require subsequent local calibration. However, the drawback of FAO-56 PM is that it requires all weather data and is also significantly more complicated than other models. Important observations that were made are that calibrated Turc and Makkink models performed poorly even when they were calibrated while simple models such as calibrated Hargreaves-Samani (temperature-based) and Priestley–Taylor (radiation-based) can be adequately used for irrigation scheduling in a hyper arid environments. / Ministry of Higher Education, Saudi Cultural Bureau in Canada. Saudi Agricultural Development Company (INMA).