Ophidiidae are major benthopelagic fishes with wide distribution and depth range. Three types of sonic structural patterns have been described in some studied ophidiid fishes, however, the significance of the different types of the sonic apparatus, and the distribution in the subfamilies remain unclear. In addition, although the sonic apparatus and the sonic mechanisms of the high frequency sounds produced by cusk-eels has been explained, the characteristics of extrinsic swimbladder sonic muscle is still unknown. In this study, I investigated three ophidiid subfamilies from Taiwan and reviewed the published data to study the morphological traits of their sonic apparatus. Inaddition, Hoplobrotula armata were related to study the proteomic characterization of the extrinsic swimbladder sonic muscle. Results indicate that the 13 ophidiid species in this study could be grouped into five sonic structural patterns, and three subfamilies could be separated accordingly. Furthermore, because the sister group of the family Ophidiidae-carapidae is soniferous, I suggest that the common ancestor of the three ophidiid subfamilies should also be soniferous. Comparisons made in regarded to environmental factors indicate that diversity of sonic apparatus in three ophidiids subfamiliesis depth dependent. The extrinsic swimbladder sonic muscles could be separated into ventral sonic muscle and intermediate sonic muscle. The histological cross-sections of the ventral sonic muscle fibers show peripheral ring myofibrillar region and central core and they are similar with the sonic muscle. Ventral muscle weights were higher in males than females, but the muscle fibers are smaller in males. Protein values of ventral sonic muscles showed high expression in fast and long duration constructional proteins, and males were higher in protein expression than females. Intermediate sonic muscles, on the other hand, were larger in females than males. The cross-sections of muscle fibers were similar to the white muscle. Expression in the fast constructional related protein in the intermediate sonic muscle was higher than ventral sonic muscles, and the metabolically related protein was lower than ventral sonic muscles. The phylogeny of ophidiiform fishes is not clear at present; the sonic-apparatus diversity in ophidiid fishes observed in this study becomes useful to reveal the relationship phylogenetic of ophidiids fishes. Regard the physiology of sound production, I suggest that the larger ventral sonic muscle in males are be provides a better constructional ability, and their smaller fibers are adaptative for energy metabolism regarded for continuous fast constraction and fatigue resistance. The longer intermediate sonic muscle in females is a better constructional ability than male. In intermediate sonic muscle were be fast constructional related protein, higher in expression than the ventral sonic muscles, the metabolic related protein was lower than the ventral sonic muscles. These results suggest that the intermediate sonic muscle has a hight constructional ability but has a disventage of being easily fatigue.

In recent years, the utilization of 3D display systems became popular in many application areas. One of the most important issues in the utilization of these systems is to render the correct view to the observer based on his/her position. In this thesis, we propose and implement a single user view rendering system for autostereoscopic/stereoscopic displays. The system can easily be installed on a standard PC together with an autostereoscopic display or stereoscopic glasses (shutter, polarized, pulfrich, and anaglyph) with appropriate video card. Proposed system composes of three main blocks: view point detection, view point tracking and intermediate view reconstruction. Haar object detection method, which is based on boosted cascade of simple feature classifiers, is utilized as the view point detection method. After detection, feature points are found on the detected region and accordingly they are fed to the feature tracker. View point of the observer is calculated by using the tracked position of the observer on the image. Correct stereoscopic view is, then, rendered on the display. A 3D warping-based method is utilized in the system as the intermediate view reconstruction method. System is implemented on a computer with Pentium IV 3.0 GHz processor using E-D 3D shutter glasses and Creative NX Webcam.

Production lines with unreliable machines have received a great amount of attention in the literature. Especially, two-station systems have mostly been studied because such systems are easier to handle when compared to the longer lines. In literature, longer lines are usually evaluated by a decomposition algorithm, whereby the long line is partitioned into chunks of two-station lines. Decomposition algorithms require intermediate buffer storages of capacity at least two or three. The trends in modern manufacturing practices, on the other hand, such as the Toyota Production System, dictate that intermediate storages be eliminated. Our work studies multi-station lines with no intermediate storage. We develop software to automate the generation of transition probability matrices to allow the analysis of system behavior. The algorithm allows the use of software packages to handle computations and to solve for exact solutions. Long-run behavior is obtained via the algorithm developed in the computational environment MATLAB. The purpose is to analyze the system performance measures such as starvation and blockage times of stations, production rate and work-in-process. In addition, the production rate and the work-in-process measures over failure and repair probabilities are curve-fit to establish simple and useful empirical formulas for lines consisting three, four and five identical stations. Numerical analyses show that the proposed algorithm is effective for exact solutions and the suggested formulas are valid for approximate solutions.

Three cobalt-based oxides operating at the Co(III)/Co(II) redox couple have been investigated as potential cathode materials for the intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFCs). X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements confirmed that both the oxygen-deficient perovskite Sr[subscript 0.7]Y[subscript 0.3]CoO[subscript 2.65-delta] (SYCO) and the double-perovskite Ba₂[Co][Bi[subscript x]Sc[subscript 0.2]Co[subscript 1.8-x]][subscript O6-delta] (x = 0.1 and 0.2) (BBSC) contain high-spin Co(III) in the bulk at room temperature and thus avoid the thermally driven spin-state crossover of the Co(III) ions usually observed in other cobalt-containing perovskite oxides. Electrochemical characterizations demonstrated that both cobalt oxides operating on the Co(III)/Co(II) redox couple are equally catalytically active for the oxygen reduction reaction as those operating on the Co(IV)/Co(III) redox couple. With an LSGM electrolyte-supported single test cell and NiO+GDC as anode, the maximum power densities Pmax at 800 ºC reach 927 and 1180 mW·cm⁻² for SYCO and BBSC cathodes, respectively. The oxygen-deficient perovskites Sr[subscript 1-x]R[subscript x]CoO[subscript 3-delta] (R = Eu-Ho, Y, x [approximately equal] 0.3) are identified as a new class of cathode materials for IT-SOFCs in this dissertation. On the other hand, the layered Ba2Co9O14 (BCO) containing the low-spin Co(III) at room temperature undergoes a thermally driven spin-state crossover, which has prevented it from being evaluated as the cathode of IT-SOFCs. This problem was overcome by fabrication of a 50-50 wt.% BCO + SDC (Sm[subscript 0.2]Ce[subscript 0.8]O[subscript 1.9]) composite cathode. The addition of SDC not only improved the adhesion to the electrolyte, but also enhanced the electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction. The composite cathode delivers a nearly stable P[subscript max] of ~450 mW·cm-2 at 800 °C in an LSGM electrolyte-supported single test cell. In addition, the electrochemical lithium intercalation process in the monoclinic Nb12O29 was studied with a Li/Nb₁₂O₂₉ half-cell, and the results showed that it can reversibly incorporate a relatively large amount of Li-ions in the voltage window of 2.5-1.0 V at a slow discharge/charge rate while retaining structural integrity. Compared with that of the bare Nb₁₂O₂₉, samples with carbon coating show an improved rate capability. The lithium insertion mechanism into Nb₁₂O₂₉ has also been discussed in terms of sites available to the lithium ions / text

Introduktion: Historiskt sett har de svenska företagens lånebaserade finansiering mestadels utgjorts av banklån. Efter finanskrisen 2008 har bankerna tvingats till att minska utlåningen när de numera jobbar utefter det nya regelverket Basel III. Rapporter från bland annat riksbanken och svenskt näringsliv menar att detta regelverk kommer att slå hårdast mot svenska små bolag. Forskning inom området menar att den svenska marknaden för företagsobligationer inte fått den utveckling den borde haft. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att söka en förståelse till varför den svenska marknaden för företagsobligationer förefaller att vara underutvecklad bland små bolag, samt att undersöka urvalets lämplighet för ett framtida inträde på den svenska företagsobligationsmarknaden. För att styrka uppsatsens resultat kommer studien även att inkludera ett jämförelseindex hämtat från Large Cap.   Metod: För att infria studiens syfte har en metodtriangulering tillämpats. Empirin har delvis samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med aktörer listade på svenska Small Cap.  En intervjuguide utformades på basis av studiens förda problematik och teoretiska referensram. Empirin har även samlats in genom en multipel regressions analys i syfte att undersöka urvalets lämplighet för ett framtida inträde på den svenska företagsobligationsmarknaden.  Slutsats: Resultatet vi erhöll från studien är att den svenska marknaden för företagsobligationer fortfarande är underutvecklad. Studien visade att de mindre bolagens kunskap till marknaden är bristfällig och att bankernas nya roll som intermediär skapar informationsasymmetrier och således stora transaktionskostnader. Studien kan även konkludera att företags storlek, mätt i totala tillgångar, skulle kunna utgöra en företagsspecifik variabel som kan förklara en otillräcklig kreditvärdighet för ett eventuellt inträde på företagsobligationsmarknaden. / Introduction: Historically, the Swedish companies' loan-based financing mostly consists of bank loans. After the 2008 financial crisis, banks have been forced to reduce lending as they now work along the new Basel III regulations. The Swedish Riksbank and the Swedish business community believe that this regulation will hit hardest towards smaller companies. Researches in the field believe that the Swedish corporate bond market did not receive the development it ought to have been. Aim: The purpose of this study is to seek an understanding of why the Swedish corporate bond market seems to be underdeveloped among small companies and also to examine the future suitability regarding a future entry on the Swedish corporate bond market, for the selection. To put the study results into perspective, the study will include a benchmark gathered from the Large Cap. Method: To meet the study objective, a method triangulation is applied. The empirical data has partly been collected through semi-structured interviews with actors listed on the Swedish Small Cap. An interview guide was designed on the basis of the study´s problematization and theoretical framework. The empirical data is also collected through a multiple regression analysis, in order to examine the sample suitability for future entry into the Swedish corporate bond market. Conclusion: The results we obtained from this study is that the Swedish corporate bond market is still underdeveloped. The study showed that the smaller companies knowledge of the market is insufficient and that the banks' new role as intermediate are creating information asymmetries and henceforth high transaction costs. The study may also conclude that the company's size, measured in total assets, could provide a firm-specific variable that can explain an inadequate credit rating for a possible entry into the corporate bond market.

<p>This study explore the capabilities of Intermediate Phase (grades 4-6) learners in a Quintile 1 school in the Metro Central of Cape Town, through the lens of the capabilities approach theorized by Amartya Sen. This approach relates to how learners are able to utilize their capability sets to attain functionings in the face of poverty i.e. attain the freedom to live the kind of life they value. The study has chosen the capabilities approach because of its high interdisciplinary and multidimensional characteristics. This makes it appropriate to the South Africa context which is characterized by inequality, deprivation and segregation. In this regard, the study explores the features of poverty and forms of capabilities in relation to Intermediate Phase Learners in Quintile 1 Schools. Furthermore the study attempts to explain the effect of poverty on the capabilities of this group of learners in a selected Quintile 1 school in the Metro Central of Cape Town.</p>

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

In order to take the performance advantages of the current multicore and heterogeneous architectures the compilers are required to perform more and more complex program transformations. The search space of the possible program optimizations is huge and unstructured. Selecting the best transformation and predicting the potential performance benefits of that transformation is the major problem in today's optimizing compilers. The promising approach to handling the program optimizations is to focus on the automatic loop optimizations expressed in the polyhedral model. The current approaches for optimizing programs in the polyhedral model broadly fall into two classes. The first class of the methods is based on the linear optimization of the analytical cost function. The second class is based on the exhaustive iterative search. While the first approach is fast, it can easily miss the optimal solution. The iterative approach is more precise, but its running time might be prohibitively expensive. In this thesis we present a novel search-based approach to program transformations in the polyhedral model. The new method combines the benefits - effectiveness and precision - of the current approaches, while it tries to minimize their drawbacks. Our approach is based on enumerating the evaluations of the precise, nonlinear performance predicting cost-function. The current practice is to use the polyhedral model in the context of source-to-source compilers. We have implemented our techniques in a GCC framework that is based on the low level three address code representation. We show that the chosen level of abstraction for the intermediate representation poses scalability challenges, and we show the ways to overcome those problems. On the other hand, it is shown that the low level IR abstraction opens new degrees of freedom that are beneficial for the search-based transformation strategies and for the polyhedral compilation in general.

The thesis outlines a hierarchical modelling methodology for investigation in vehicle dynamics, in particular for combined ride and handling manoeuvres. The methodology involves the use of detailed multi-degrees of freedom models of vehicles with the inclusion of sources of non-linearity, using a multi-body approach, based on Lagrangian dynamics for constrained systems. It also includes the use of simpler and task-specific models, formulated in Newton-Euler approach. These simpler models with lower degrees of freedom, but with appropriate level of detail are more efficient in the study of specific, but non-trivial problems such as transient behaviour of vehicles in combined ride and handling, as encountered in many routine daily manoeuvres. The modelling methodology is supported by careful vehicle testing, both for validation of the proposed approach, and assessment of the extent of applicability of simple, intermediate and multi-degrees of freedom full-vehicle models. Certain important vehicle handling and ride characteristics in pitch plane dynamics, roll behaviour, vehicle body bounce and combination of these have been studied, as well as the effectiveness of restraining action of chassis elements, such as the semileading and trailing arms for passive control of vehicle squat and dive motions, arising from acceleration from coast to drive and deceleration/brake of vehicle from drive to coast. Combined pitch and bounce motions have been studied when negotiating speed traps such as bumps, which also combine with significant body roll when single event obstacles of this kind are introduced. The novelty of the research is in the detailed integrative numerical-experimental approach, and the development of intermediate models that adequately predict vehicle behaviour under steady and non-steady conditions for a wide range of ride and handling manoeuvres. The investigations have culminated in a significant number of findings of practical use, particularly the ineffectiveness of anti-squat and dive features when combined pitch and bounce motions limit the usefulness of these devices. On the contrary, excessive roll dynamic behaviour of the vehicle is effectively palliated by the anti-roll bar, even under complex combined pitch, roll and body bounce such as those experienced in negotiating single event speed bumps. Good agreement is found between the predictions of the intermediate model and those of the multi-body model and the actual vehicle tests, particularly for pitch and bounce dynamics.

The atomic resolution structure of a low populated and transiently formed on-pathway folding intermediate of the FF domain from human HYPA/FBP11 has recently been reported[1]. The structure was determined on the basis of backbone chemical shift and bond vector orientation restraints measured on the ‘invisible’ intermediate state using relaxation dispersion nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy that were subsequently input into the data-base structure determination program CS-Rosetta. This thesis focuses on the cross-validation of the structure so produced. We present here the solution NMR structure of a mimic of the folding intermediate that is highly populated in solution, obtained from the wild-type domain by protein mutagenesis. The ensemble of structures generated of the mimic are within 2Å of the relaxation dispersion/CS-Rosetta structures of the intermediate, with the non-native interactions in the intermediate also observed in the mimic. The results presented in this thesis strongly confirm the structure of the FF domain folding intermediate, in particular, and validate the use of relaxation dispersion derived restraints in structural studies of invisible excited states, in general.