This is a literature study, in linear algebra, about positive and nonnegative matrices and their special properties. We say that a matrix or a vector is positive/nonnegative if all of its entries are positive/nonnegative. First, we study some generalities and become acquainted with two types of nonnegative matrices; irreducible and reducible. After exploring their characteristics we investigate and prove the two main theorems of this subject, namely Perron's and Perron-Frobenius' theorem. In short Perron's theorem from 1907 tells us that the spectral radius of a positive matrix is a simple eigenvalue of the matrix and that its eigenvector can be taken to be positive. In 1912, Georg Frobenius generalized Perron's results also to irreducible nonnegative matrices. The two theorems have a wide range of applications in both pure mathematics and practical matters. In real world scenarios, many measurements are nonnegative (length, time, amount, etc.) and so their mathematical formulations often relate to Perron-Frobenius theory. The theory's importance to linear dynamical systems, such as Markov chains, cannot be overstated; it determines when, and to what, an iterative process will converge. This result is in turn the underlying theory for the page-ranking algorithm developed by Google in 1998. We will see examples of all these applications in chapters four and five where we will be particularly interested in different types of Markov chains.  The theory in this thesis can be found in many books. Here, most of the material is gathered from Horn-Johnson [5], Meyer [9] and Shapiro [10]. However, all of the theorems and proofs are formulated in my own way and the examples and illustrations are concocted by myself, unless otherwise noted. / Det här är en litteraturstudie, inom linjär algebra, om positiva och icke-negativa matriser och deras speciella egenskaper. Vi säger att en matris eller en vektor är positiv/icke-negativ om alla dess element är positiva/icke-negativa. Inledningsvis går vi igenom några grundläggande begrepp och bekanta oss med två typer av icke-negativa matriser; irreducibla och reducibla. Efter att vi utforskat deras egenskaper så studerar vi och bevisar ämnets två huvudsatser; Perrons och Perron-Frobenius sats. Kortfattat så säger Perrons sats, från 1907, att spektralradien för en positiv matris är ett simpelt egenvärde till matrisen och att dess egenvektor kan tas positiv. År 1912 så generaliserade Georg Frobenius Perrons resultat till att gälla också för irreducibla icke-negativa matriser.  De två satserna har både många teoretiska och praktiska tillämpningar. Många verkliga scenarios har icke-negativa mått (längd, tid, mängd o.s.v) och därför relaterar dess matematiska formulering till Perron-Frobenius teori. Teorin är betydande även för linjära dynamiska system, såsom Markov-kedjor, eftersom den avgör när, och till vad, en iterativ process konvergerar. Det resultatet är i sin tur den underliggande teorin bakom algoritmen PageRank som utvecklades av Google år 1998. Vi kommer se exempel på alla dessa tillämpningar i kapitel fyra och fem, där vi speciellt intresserar oss för olika typer av Markov-kedjor. Teorin i den här artikeln kan hittas i många böcker. Det mesta av materialet som presenteras här har hämtats från Horn-Johnson [5], Meyer [9] och Shapiro [10]. Däremot är alla satser och bevis formulerade på mitt eget sätt och alla exempel, samt illustrationer, har jag skapat själv, om inget annat sägs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-250). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3024517.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-226). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-233). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

No description available.

Nosso objetivo neste trabalho é analisarmos a construção e as transformações da ideia de história do antropólogo norte-americano Marshall Sahlins, entre as décadas de 1950 e 1980. Acreditamos que este período é importante pelo fato de encontrarmos nele os princípios de uma forma de pensar a história que continuará a dominar a obra de Sahlins nas décadas seguintes. Para analisarmos sua ideia de história, bem como suas transformações, interpretaremos os princípios teóricos que a define enquanto tal. Argumentaremos que Sahlins adotará duas ideias de história durante este período: uma que terá a palavra "evolução" como princípio teórico central e outra em que os termos "cultura" e "estrutura" serão seus princípios teóricos mais importantes. Estas ideias de história serão analisadas também no contexto da sociedade e das ideias que tiveram um papel central na vida intelectual de Sahlins. Defenderemos também que, neste contexto, as obras dos antropólogos Leslie White e Claude Lévi-Strauss terão uma grande importância. E esperamos, deste modo, dar duas contribuições: uma para a compreensão da ideia de história de Sahlins; e outra para o atual debate sobre a relação entre História e Antropologia. / Our objective in this work is to analyze the construction and the transformations of the idea of history of the American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, between de decades of 1950 and 1980. We believe that this period is important because we can find in it the principles of a way of thinking about history that will continue to dominate Sahlins work in the following decades. In order to analyze his idea of history, as well as its transformations, we will interpret the theoretical principles that define it as such. We will argue that Sahlins will adopt two ideas of history during this period: one that will have the word "evolution" as its central theoretical principle and another where the words "culture" and "structure" will be its most important theoretical principles. These ideas of history will also be analyzed in the context of the society and the ideas that had a central role in Sahlins intellectual life. We will also defend that, in this context, the works of Leslie White and Claude Lévi-Strauss will have a great importance. And we hope, in this way, to give two contributions: one for the understanding of Sahlins idea of history; and another to the current debate about the relationship between History and Anthropology.

The majority of signals, that need to be processed, are analog, which are continuous and can take an infinite number of values at any time instant. Precision of the analog signals are limited due to influence of distortion which leads to the use of digital signals for better performance and cost. Analog to Digital Converter (ADC), converts the continuous time signal to the discrete time signal. Most A/D converters are classified into two categories according to their sampling technique: nyquist rate ADC and oversampled ADC. The nyquist rate ADC operates at the sample frequency equal to twice the base-band frequency, whereas the oversampled ADC operates at the sample frequency greater than the nyquist frequency. The sigma delta ADC using the oversampling technique provides high resolution, low to medium speed, relaxed anti-aliasing requirements and various options for reconfiguration. On the contrary, resolution of the sigma delta ADC can be traded for high speed operation. Data sampling techniques plays a vital role in the sigma delta modulator and can be classified into discrete time sampling and continuous time sampling. Furthermore, the discrete time sampling technique can be implemented using the switched-capacitor (SC) integrator and the switched-current (SI) integrator circuits. The SC integrator technique provides high accuracy but occupies a larger area. Unlike the SC integrator, the SI integrator offers low input impedance and parasitic capacitance. This makes the SI integrator suitable for low supply voltage and high frequency applications. From a detailed literature study on the multi-bit sigma delta modulator, it is analyzed that, theneeds a highly linear digital to analogue converter (DAC) in its feedback path. The sigma delta modulators are very sensitive to linearity of the DAC which can degrade the performance without any attenuation. For this purpose T.C. Leslie and B. Singh proposed a Hybrid architecture using the multi-bit quantizer with a single bit DAC. The most significant bit is fed back to the DAC while the least significant bits are omitted. This omission requires a complex digital calibration to complete the analog to digital conversion process which is a small price to pay compared to the linearity requirements of the DAC. This project work describes the design of High-Speed Hybrid Current modeModulator with a single bit feedback DAC at the speed of 2.56GHz in a state-of-the-art 65 nm CMOS process. It comprises of both the analog and digital processing blocks, using T.C. Leslie and B. Singh architecture with the switched current integrator data sampling technique for low voltage, high speed operation. The whole system is verified mathematically in matlab and implemented using signal flow graphs and verilog a code. The analog blocks like switched current integrator, flash ADC and DAC are implemented in transistor level using a 65 nm CMOS technology and the functionality of each block is verified. Dynamic performance parameters such as SNR, SNDR and SFDR for different levels of abstraction matches the mathematical model performance characteristics.

"Storied Voices in Native American Texts: Harry Robinson, Thomas King, James Welch and Leslie Marmon Silko" approaches Native American literatures from within an interdisciplinary framework that complicates traditional notions o f literary "origins" and canon. It situates the discussion of Native literatures in a Native American context, suggesting that contemporary Native American writing has its roots in Native oral storytelling traditions. Each of these authors draws on specific stories and histories from his or her Native culture. They also draw on European elements and contexts because these are now part o f Native American experience. I suggest that Native oral tradition is already inherently novelistic, and the stories that lie behind contemporary Native American writing explicitly connect past and present as aspects o f current Native reality. Contemporary Native American writers are continuing an on-going and vital storytelling tradition through written forms. A comparison of the texts o f a traditional Native storyteller, Robinson, with the highly literate novels of King, Welch and Silko, shows how orally told stories connect with the process o f writing. Robinson's storytelling suggests how these stories "theorize" the world as he experiences it; the Native American novel continues to theorize Native experience in contemporary times. Native writers use culturally specific stories to express an on-going Native history. Their novels require readers to examine their assumptions about who is telling whose story, and the traditional distinctions made between fact and fiction, history and story. King's Green Grass. Running Water takes stories from Western European literary traditions and Judeao-Christian mythology and presents them as part of a Native creation story. Welch's novel Fools Crow re-writes a particular episode from history, the Marias River Massacre, from a Blackfeet perspective. Silko's Almanac of the Dead recreates the Mayan creation story o f the Popol Vuh in the context o f twentiethcentury American culture. Each of these authors maintains the dialogic fluidity of oral storytelling performance in written forms and suggests that stories not only reflect the world, but that they create it in the way that Robinson understands storytelling as a form of theory.

ix, 226 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation argues that American women writers have revised sacred texts to challenge patriarchy, racism, and colonialism and rewritten American history to reveal how biblical scripture has been implicated in these processes. I focus on the literary strategies of Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Lucille Clifton to rewrite sacred texts and create myths for a new society. In different ways, these writers redefine Christianity, often by countering the erasures of women in biblical scripture, recovering suppressed texts such as those from the gnostic tradition, and creating new sacred texts. Chapter I traces the history of feminist scriptural revision from the early feminist movement to its resurgence in the late-twentieth century. In this period, a number of authors rewrote religious scripture from a pre-Christian tradition; Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels played a critical role in the attention given to scripture suppressed by Christianity and the potential it holds for writers interested in recovering alternative epistemologies. Chapter II focuses on Morrison's Beloved and Jazz , which are concerned with the way biblical theology is proliferated through apocalyptic narrative strategies and omniscient narration. This chapter investigates the shift Morrison makes between biblical and gnostic concerns in the first two books of her trilogy. Chapter III analyzes the final book in Morrison's trilogy, Paradise , and compares it to Silko's Gardens in the Dunes . Here, Morrison relies on gnostic sources to scrutinize the effects of biblical notions of utopia on literature and its implications for social relations. Gardens uses the same sources but puts them to different uses, subverting their authority in a rewriting that supports Native survival through a program of cultural syncretism. Chapter IV examines the poetry of Lucille Clifton, who, although initially revising Christianity through her refiguring of the Lucifer character, rejects that tradition following the events of 9/11. Clifton's work in Mercy marks a juncture in women's revisions of sacred texts in its departure from Christianity and its introduction of a new sacred text and moral code not predicated upon hierarchy. In conclusion, I consider how these writers extend feminist and anti-racist traditions of scriptural revision explored in the introduction. / Adviser: Shari Huhndorf

xi, 233 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation argues that a fundamental paradox underlies U.S. environmentalism: even as it functions as a critique of dominant social and economic practices, environmentalism simultaneously reinforces many social hierarchies, especially with regard to race, immigration, and disability, despite its claims to recognize the interdependence of human and ecological well-being. This project addresses the related questions: In what ways does environmentalism--as a code of behavioral imperatives and as a set of rhetorical strategies--ironically play a role in the exploitation of land and communities? Along what lines--class, race, ability, gender, nationality, age, and even "sense of place"--do these environmental codes and discourses delineate good and bad environmental behavior? I contend that environmentalism emerged in part to help legitimize U.S. imperial ambitions and support racialized and patriarchal conceptions of national identity. Concern about "the environment" made anxieties about communities of color more palatable than overt racism. Furthermore, "environmentalism's hidden attachments" to whiteness and Manifest Destiny historically aligned the movement with other repressive ideologies, such as eugenics and strict anti-immigration. These "hidden attachments" exist today, yet few have analyzed their contemporary implications, a gap this project fills. In three chapters, I detail nineteenth-century environmentalism's influence on contemporary environmental thought. Each of these three illustrative chapters investigates a distinct category of environmentalism's "ecological others": Native Americans, people with disabilities, and undocumented immigrants. I argue that environmentalism defines these groups as "ecological others" because they are viewed as threats to nature and to the American national body politic. The first illustrative chapter analyzes Native American land claims in Leslie Marmon Silko's 1991 novel, Almanac of the Dead . The second illustrative chapter examines the importance of the fit body in environmental literature and U.S. adventure culture. In the third illustrative chapter, I integrate literary analysis with geographical theories and methods to investigate national security, wilderness protection, and undocumented immigration in the borderland. In a concluding fourth chapter, I analyze works of members of the excluded groups discussed in the first three chapters to show how they transform mainstream environmentalism to bridge social justice and ecological concerns. This dissertation contains previously published material. / Committee in charge: Shari Huhndorf, Chairperson, English; Louise Westling, Member, English; David Vazquez, Member, English; Juanita Sundberg, Member, Not from U of 0 Susan Hardwick, Outside Member, Geography