This work investigates methods to provide clinically useful visualisations of the data produced by an X-ray/CT scanner. Specifically, it examines the use of perceptual depth cues (PDCs) and perceptual depth cue theory to create effective visualisations. Two visualisation systems are explored: one to display X-ray data and the other to display volumetric data. The systems are enhanced using stereoscopic and motion PDCs. The presented analyses show that these are the only possible enhancements common to both systems. The theoretical and practical aspects of implementing these enhancements are presented. Volume rendering techniques are explored to find an approach which gracefully handles poorly sampled data and provides the interactive rendering needed for motion cues. A low cost real time volume rendering system is developed and a novel stereo volume rendering technique is presented. The developed system uses commodity graphics hardware and Open-GL. To evaluate the visualisation systems a task-based user test is designed and implemented. The test requires the subjects to be observed while they complete a 3D diagnostic task using each system. The speed and accuracy with which the task is performed are used as metrics. The experimental results are used to compare the effectiveness of the augmented perceptual depth cues and to cross-compare the systems. The experiments show that the user performance in the visualisation systems are statistically equivalent. This suggests that the enhanced X-ray visualisation can be used in place of CT data for some tasks. The benefits of this are two fold: a decrease in the patient's exposure to radiation and a reduction in the data acquisition time.

Character animation is the process of modelling and rendering a mobile character in a virtual world. It has numerous applications both off-line, such as virtual actors in films, and real-time, such as in games and other virtual environments. There are a number of algorithms for determining the appearance of an animated character, with different trade-offs between quality, ease of control, and computational cost. We introduce a new method, animation space, which provides a good balance between the ease-of-use of very simple schemes and the quality of more complex schemes, together with excellent performance. It can also be integrated into a range of existing computer graphics algorithms. Animation space is described by a simple and elegant linear equation. Apart from making it fast and easy to implement, linearity facilitates mathematical analysis. We derive two metrics on the space of vertices (the “animation space”), which indicate the mean and maximum distances between two points on an animated character. We demonstrate the value of these metrics by applying them to the problems of parametrisation, level-of-detail (LOD) and frustum culling. These metrics provide information about the entire range of poses of an animated character, so they are able to produce better results than considering only a single pose of the character, as is commonly done. In order to compute parametrisations, it is necessary to segment the mesh into charts. We apply an existing algorithm based on greedy merging, but use a metric better suited to the problem than the one suggested by the original authors. To combine the parametrisations with level-of-detail, we require the charts to have straight edges. We explored a heuristic approach to straightening the edges produced by the automatic algorithm, but found that manual segmentation produced better results. Animation space is nevertheless beneficial in flattening the segmented charts; we use least squares conformal maps (LSCM), with the Euclidean distance metric replaced by one of our animation-space metrics. The resulting parametrisations have significantly less overall stretch than those computed based on a single pose. Similarly, we adapt appearance preserving simplification (APS), a progressive mesh-based LOD algorithm, to apply to animated characters by replacing the Euclidean metric with an animation-space metric. When using the memoryless form of APS (in which local rather than global error is considered), the use of animation space for computations reduces the geometric errors introduced by LOD decomposition, compared to simplification based on a single pose. User tests, in which users compared video clips of the two, demonstrated a statistically significant preference for the animation-space simplifications, indicating that the visual quality is better as well. While other methods exist to take multiple poses into account, they are based on a sampling of the pose space, and the computational cost scales with the number of samples used. In contrast, our method is analytic and uses samples only to gather statistics. The quality of LOD approximations by improved further by introducing a novel approach to LOD, influence simplification, in which we remove the influences of bones on vertices, and adjust the remaining influences to approximate the original vertex as closely as possible. Once again, we use an animation-space metric to determine the approximation error. By combining influence simplification with the progressive mesh structure, we can obtain further improvements in quality: for some models and at some detail levels, the error is reduced by an order of magnitude relative to a pure progressive mesh. User tests showed that for some models this significantly improves quality, while for others it makes no significant difference. Animation space is a generalisation of skeletal subspace deformation (SSD), a popular method for real-time character animation. This means that there is a large existing base of models that can immediately benefit from the modified algorithms mentioned above. Furthermore, animation space almost entirely eliminates the well-known shortcomings of SSD (the so-called “candy-wrapper” and “collapsing elbow” effects). We show that given a set of sample poses, we can fit an animation-space model to these poses by solving a linear least-squares problem. Finally, we demonstrate that animation space is suitable for real-time rendering, by implementing it, along with level-of-detail rendering, on a PC with a commodity video card. We show that although the extra degrees of freedom make the straightforward approach infeasible for complex models, it is still possible to obtain high performance; in fact, animation space requires fewer basic operations to transform a vertex position than SSD. We also consider two methods of lighting LOD-simplified models using the original normals: tangent-space normal maps, an existing method that is fast to render but does not capture dynamic structures such as wrinkles; and tangent maps, a novel approach that encodes animation-space tangent vectors into textures, and which captures dynamic structures. We compare the methods both for performance and quality, and find that tangent-space normal maps are at least an order of magnitude faster, while user tests failed to show any perceived difference in quality between them.

Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) are temporal probabilistic models for reasoning over time. They often formulate the core reasoning component of intelligent systems in the field of machine learning. Recent studies have focused on the development of some DBNs such as Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and their variants, which are explicitly represented by highly skilled users and have gained popularity in speech recognition. These varieties of HMMs represented as DBNs have contributed to the baseline of temporal modelling. However they are limited in their expressive power as they are approximated and pose difficult challenges for users when choosing the appropriate model for diverse real-life applications. To worsen the situation further, researchers and practitioners have also stressed that applications often have difficulties when evolving (or learning) such network models from environments captured as massive datasets, due to the ongoing predominance of computational intensity (or nondeterministic polynomial (NP) time hard). Finding solutions to these challenges is a difficult task. In this thesis, a new class of temporal probabilistic modelling, called evolving dynamic Bayesian networks (EDBN), is proposed and demonstrated to make technology easier so as to accommodate both experts and non-experts, such as industrial practitioners, decision-makers, researchers, etc. Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) are ideally suited to achieve situation awareness, in which elements in the environment must be perceived within a volume of time and space, their meaning understood, and their status predicted in the near future. The use of Dynamic Bayesian Networks in achieving situation awareness has been poorly explored in current research efforts. This research completely evolves DBNs automatically from any environment captured as multivariate time series (MTS) which minimizes the approximations and mitigates the challenges of choice of models. This potentially accommodates both highly skilled users and non-expert practitioners, and attracts diverse real-world application areas for DBNs. The architecture of our EDBN uses a combined strategy as it resolves two orthogonal issues to address the challenging problems: (1) evolving DBNs in the absence of domain experts and (2) mitigating computational intensity (or NP-hard) problems with economic scalability. Most notably, the major contributions of this thesis are as follows: the development of a new class of temporal probabilistic modeling (EDBN), whose architecture facilitates the demonstration of its emergent situation awareness (ESA) and emergent future situation awareness (EFSA) technologies. The ESA and its variant reveal hidden patterns over current and future time steps respectively. Among other contributions are the development and integration of an economic scalable framework called dynamic memory management in adaptive learning (DMMAL) into the architecture of the EDBN to emerge such network models from environments captured as massive datasets; the design of configurable agent actuators; adaptive operators; representative partitioning algorithms which facilitate the scalability framework; formal development and optimization of genetic algorithm (GA) to emerge optimal Bayesian networks from datasets, with emphasis on backtracking avoidance; and diverse applications of EDBN technologies such as business intelligence, revealing trends of insulin dose to medical patients, water quality management, project profitability analysis, sensor networks, etc. To ensure the universality and reproducibility of our architecture, we methodically conducted experiments using varied real-life datasets and publicly available machine learning datasets mostly from the University of California Irvine (UCI) repository.

The field of Procedural Generation is being increasingly used in modern content generation for its ability to significantly decrease the cost and time involved. One such area of Procedural Generation is Shape Grammars, a type of formal grammar that operates on geometric shapes instead of symbols. Conventional shape grammar implementations use mesh representations of shapes, but this has two significant drawbacks. Firstly, mesh representations make Boolean geometry operations on shapes difficult to accomplish. Boolean geometry operations allow us to combine shapes using Boolean operators (and, or, not), producing complex, composite shapes. A second drawback is that sub-, or trans-shape detailing is challenging to achieve. To address these two problems with conventional mesh-based shape grammars, we present a novel extension to shape grammars, in which a voxel representation of the generated shapes is used. We outline a five stage algorithm for using these extensions and discuss a number of optional enhancements and optimizations. The final output of the algorithm is a detailed mesh model, suitable for use in real-time or offline graphics applications. We also test our extension’s performance and range of output with three categories of testing: performance testing, output range testing, and variation testing. The results of the testing with our proof-of-concept implementation show that our unoptimized algorithm is slower than conventional shape grammar implementations, with a running time that is O(N^3) for an N^3 voxel grid. However, there is scope for further optimization to our algorithm, which would significantly reduce running times and memory consumption. We outline and discuss several such avenues for performance enhancement. Additionally, testing reveals that our algorithm is able to successfully produce a broad range of detailed outputs, exhibiting many features that would be very difficult to accomplish using mesh-based shape grammar implementations. This range of 3D models includes fractals, skyscraper buildings, space ships, castles, and more. Further, stochastic rules can be used to produce a variety of models that share a basic archetype, but differ noticeably in their details.

In this thesis, a systematic study of the structural characterization of the capsular polysaccharides of Streptococcus pneumoniae is conducted using Molecular Modelling methods. S.pneumoniae causes invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD), a leading cause of death in children under five. The serotypes in group 6 are amongst the most common of IPD causing serotypes. We performed structural characterization of serogroup 6 to understand the structural relationships between serotypes 6A, 6B, 6C and 6D in an attempt to understand the cross protection seen within the group. The 6B saccharide has been included in the early conjugate vaccine (PCV-7), and has shown to elicit protection against the 6B as well as offer some cross-protection against 6A. 6A has since been included in the latter conjugate vaccines in the hopes of eliciting stronger protection against 6A and 6C. Molecular Dynamics simulations were used to investigate the conformations of oligosaccharides with the aim of elucidating a conformational rationale for why small changes in the carbohydrate primary structure result in variable efficacy. We began by examining the Potential of Mean Force (PMF) plots of the disaccharide subunits which make up the Serogroup 6 oligosaccharides. The PMFs showed the free energy proles along the torsional angles space of the disaccharides. This conformational information was then used to build the four oligosaccharides on which simulations were conducted. These simulations showed that serotype pairs 6A/6C and 6B/6D have similar structures.

Under den ekonomiska krisen i Sverige på nittiotalet skedde två trendbrott på den svenskaarbetsmarknaden. Den totala arbetslösheten steg markant för att sedan ligga kvar på betydligthögre nivåer än tidigare, och dessutom förändrades arbetslöshetens sammansättning. Innankrisen var män arbetslösa i mindre utsträckning än kvinnor men från och med krisens utbrotthar män tenderat att vara mer arbetslösa än kvinnor. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utredavad könsskillnaderna i arbetslösheten i Sveriges kommuner beror på.En ekonometrisk analys av Sveriges kommuner ligger till grund för studien och genomförsmed en Fixed Effects-modell. Datamaterialet som ligger till grund för studien avser åren1996-2012 och är uppdelat på kommunnivå. Kvoten mellan mäns och kvinnors arbetslöshetfungerar som beroendevariabel och förklaras av variabler för olika näringsgrenar,utbildningsnivå, andelen kvinnor i kommunen och kommunfullmäktige, andelen individermed utländsk bakgrund, kommunens nettoinvesteringar samt bruttoregionprodukten iSveriges län. Resultaten visar att en könssegregerad arbetsmarknad påverkar könsskillnader i arbetslöshet.Män påverkas generellt sett mer av förändringar i andelen anställda i olika näringsgrenar änkvinnor. När det gäller utbildning minskar kvoten mer ju högre utbildningen är och attkoefficienten blir negativ beror på att kvinnors arbetslöshet ökar mer än mäns. Vidare harandelen individer med utländsk bakgrund i en kommun en negativ inverkan på kvoten, vilketäven gäller kommunens nettoinvesteringar samt bruttoregionprodukten. Andelen kvinnor i enkommun har positiv effekt på kvoten medan andelen kvinnor i kommunfullmäktige ärinsignifikant. Baserat på detta resultat bör beslutsfattare som vill minska könsskillnaderna iarbetslösheten arbeta för att könssegregeringen på arbetsmarknaden och skillnaderna mellanpojkar och flickor i skolan minskar, för att integreringen av nyanlända förbättras och attkönssammansättningen i förtroendevalda församlingar blir jämnare. Åtgärder som dessaskulle kunna minska arbetslösheten samtidigt som jämställdheten ökar.

Abstract The aim of the thesis was to examine some older people's experiences of everyday life and how it is to grow old in Namibia today. Because everyday life is a broad concept, we chose to focus on some specific parts of everyday life. These are chores, family, work/education, elderly past and present and the government/society. Furthermore we chose to look at the similarities and differences between the experiences on the basis of gender, race/ethnic groups and class. We chose to use a qualitative research method and to be inspired by life stories. We used a semi-structured interview guide and interviewed six people between 70 and 89 years. Three of this was women and three men. A woman and a man were white and the remained were black. Since we in our purpose had a number of themes related to everyday life our interviews focused on these. When the interviews were done we tried to look at the similarities and differences we could find. We analyzed the result with our theoretical frame and previous research. The results showed that there were large differences in economic opportunities between the interview persons and there were also differences in their chores. The black interview persons had clear divisions in the chores while the white interview persons didn’t talk about chores that much. The white interview persons also thought that the black population had gained more power in society while the black on the other hand felt they hadn’t any power in Namibia at all. The interview persons felt equally about dissatisfaction with the government and the changing view of the elderly in today's Namibia. Key words: elderly, daily life of elderly, elderly people in Namibia, gender, class, race/ethnic groups and society in transition. / Sammanfattning Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka några äldres upplevelser av vardagslivet och hur det är att åldras i Namibia idag. Eftersom vardagslivet är ett brett begrepp valde vi att utgå från några specifika delar av vardagslivet. Dessa är sysslor, familj, arbete/utbildning, äldre förr och nu samt regeringen/samhället. Vidare valde vi att se på likheter och skillnader mellan de äldres upplevelser utifrån kön, etnicitet/folkgrupper och klass. Vi valde att använda oss av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod och att inspireras av livsberättelser. Vi använde oss av en halvstrukturerad intervjuguide och intervjuade sex stycken personer mellan 70 och 89 år. Av dessa var det tre stycken kvinnor och tre män. En kvinna och en man var vit och resterande var svarta. Eftersom vi i vårt syfte hade ett antal teman kopplade till vardagslivet så utgick vi ifrån dessa under intervjuerna. När intervjuerna var klara försökte vi att titta på vilka likheter och skillnader vi kunde hitta. Resultatet analyserade vi sedan med hjälp av vår teoretiska referensram och tidigare forskning. Resultatet visade att det fanns stora skillnader på de ekonomiska möjligheterna mellan intervjupersonerna och det fanns också skillnader på deras sysslor. De svarta intervjupersonerna hade tydliga uppdelningar i sysslorna medan de vita inte alls pratade i samma utsträckning om sysslor. De vita tyckte också att den svarta befolkningen hade fått mer makt i samhället medan de svarta tvärtom tyckte att de inte alls hade någon makt i Namibia. Intervjupersonerna tyckte lika främst när det gällde missnöjet med regeringen och den förändrade synen på äldre i dagens Namibia. Nyckelord: äldre, äldres vardagsliv, äldre i Namibia, kön, klass, etnicitet/folkgrupper samt samhälle i förändring.

This research is based on the hypothesis that all terminological activities are founded upon some fundamental principles which, at the same time, are manifested in sociolinguistic context-bound variations or parameters. Answering the research questions, the thesis gains an advantage of employing both field research and literature. The former deals with carrying out a comparative study and using a maximum variation sampling technique for gathering data from Termcat, TNC, DGLFLF and the Academy of Persian Language and Literature (APLL). To control the study in a systematic way, a questionnaire concentrating on macro- and micro-structures of the target organizations has been prepared as a route map. The research also derives benefit of literature from more than thirty linguistic situations. The data were first coded and then thematically categorized according to their major similarities. The results came within three components: planning theory, linguistics of science and implementation layers. In the next step, the thesis found the second level of similarities or universal principles. The data processing continued to arrive at minor (universal or restricted) principles. The final form of a terminology planning work is determined by parameters arising out of “values”, put under nodes of principles. The values are, in fact, sociolinguistic potentialities developed and limitations imposed by a specific ecolinguistic environment. / Esta investigación se basa en la hipótesis de que todas las actividades terminológicas se fundamentan en algunos principios fundamentales, principios que, al mismo tiempo, se manifiestan en variaciones o parámetros relaciona con el contexto sociolingüístico. Para responder a las preguntas de investigación, la tesis utiliza tanto el trabajo de campo como la bibliografíala. En relación al trabajo de campo, se ha realizado un estudio comparativo de cuatro centros de Terminología (Termcat, TNC, DGLFLF y la Academia de la lengua persa y Literatura (APLL), usando una técnica de muestreo de máxima variación para la recopilación de datos, Para controlar la sistematicidad del estudio, hemos elaborado un cuestionario centrándonos en la microestructura y la macroestructura de las cuatro organizaciones, presentado en forma de hoja de ruta. La investigación presenta además los datos de una treintena de otros casos, a partir de los datos aportados por la bibliografía. Los datos recopilados han sido codificados y luego categorizados temáticamente sobre la base de sus similitudes principales. Los resultados se han organizado en tres componentes: la teoría de la planificación, la lingüística de la ciencia y las fases de aplicación. A continuación hemos analizado el segundo nivel de similitudes o principios universales. A través del procesamiento de los datos hemos establecido a principios de importancia menor (principios restringidos). En definitiva, un proyecto de planificación teinológica se concreta a partir de los parámetros derivados de "valores" o principios. Los valores son, de hecho, potencialidades sociolingüísticas limitadas por el entorno ecolingüístico específico.

Modern Molecular Dynamics force fields, such as the CHARMM36 and GLYCAM06 carbohydrate force fields, are parametrised to reproduce behaviours for specific molecules under specific conditions in order to be able to predict the behaviour of similar molecular systems, where there is often no experimental data. Coupled with the sheer number available, this makes choosing the appropriate force field a formidable task. For this reason it is important that modern force fields be regularly compared. Streptococcus pneumoniae is a cause of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) such as pneumonia and meningitis in children under five. While there are over 90 pneumococcal serotypes only a handful of these are responsible for disease. Immunisation with the conjugate vaccine PCV7, has markedly decreased invasive pneumoccocal disease. Following PCV7 immunisation, incidences of non-vaccine serotypes, especially serotype 19A, have increased. Serotype 19F's capsular polysaccharide differs from 19A's at a single linkage position. Where 19A possesses an a-D-Glcp-(1->3)-a-L-Rhap (G13R), 19F possesses an a-D-Glcp-(1->2)-a-L-Rhap (G12R) linkage. For this reason it was thought that a 19F conjugate would cross protect against 19A. Unfortunately PCV7 vaccination appears to have been largely ineffective against 19A disease. The lack of conformational information for the G12R and G13R disaccharides provided a good opportunity to compare the CHARMM and GLYCAM force fields. The dynamics of the G12R and G13R disaccharides were investigated under both CHARMM and GLYCAM.While we did identify some discrepancies, overall the force fields were in agreement in predicting a more flexible G12R than the more restricted G13R. While it is possible that these differences account for the lack of 19F to 19A cross protectionprotection, further research is required.

Conté Annex de 171 pàgines amb la traducció només consultable a la tesi en paper. / The PhD entitled "Luisa Sigea de Velasco: philosophical reflections of a sixteenth-century Spanish docta puella" focuses on verifying and justifying if Luisa Sigea (1522-1560) was a genuine philosopher. To carry out this research, we analyze her philosophical dialogue: Duarum virginum colloquium de vita aulica et privata (1552). We also translated this dialogue into Catalan ["Diàleg de dues donzelles sobre la vida àulica i la vida retirada"]. Our research focused on doing a philosophical analysis of the dialogue. Luisa Sigea aims at finding out whether the best life to come next to God and experience happiness is the court lifestyle or the secluded one. To answer this question, Sigea goes through a set of political, anthropological and epistemological reflections that are subordinated to the ethical aim of reaching God and achieving happiness / La tesi doctoral titulada "Luisa Sigea de Velasco: reflexions filosòfiques d’una docta puella espanyola del segle XVI" està dirigida a comprovar i justificar si Luisa Sigea (1522-1560) fou una autèntica filòsofa. Per poder portar a terme aquesta recerca ens hem basat en el diàleg que aquesta pensadora escrigué titulat "Duarum virginum colloquium de vita aulica et privata" (1552), el qual hem traduït al català ["Diàleg de dues donzelles sobre la vida àulica i la vida retirada"]. El nostre treball d’investigació ha consistit a fer una anàlisi filosòfica d’aquest diàleg. L’objectiu d’aquesta obra de Luisa Sigea és descobrir quin és el millor estil de vida per poder arribar al costat de Déu i gaudir de la vida feliç: l’estil de vida àulic o l’estil de vida retirada. Per poder respondre a aquesta qüestió, Sigea desenvolupa una sèrie de reflexions polítiques, antropològiques i epistemològiques que subordina a l’objectiu ètic d’arribar a Déu i a la felicitat