An investigation of the life history of the western chuckwalla, Sauromalus obesus, was undertaken in the Colorado Desert of southeastern California during a 7-year period. The study provided for a test of current life history theory and the modeling of population dynamics from environmental parameters. Colorado Desert S. obesus were mainly active February through September, but feeding occurred throughout the year. Coyotes were this species' primary predator. Home range sizes of males and females were correlated with adult female activity and nutrient requirements, respectively. The breeding status of females was determined by the presence of preovulatory follicles, oviductal eggs and copora lutea. The breeding status of males was best determined by the presence of sperm in the vas deferens and by levels of spermatogenic activity. Adult females always oviposited during the first half of July. Size at reproductive maturity for both sexes was about 125 mm snoutvent length. Age at maturity for males and females was 2 and 3 years, respectively. Mean annual reproductive frequency was 51%. Reproduction occurred in 6 of 7 years. Mean clutch size was 6.9 eggs. Clutch masses and egg masses averaged 34.3% and 5.3% of total body mass, respectively. For a given body size, there was no annual variation in clutch size, egg mass, or reproductive effort. The consistency of these traits indicates adaptation to a predictable environment. Relatively high egg masses are an adaptation to counter the harsh environment. Annual recruitment was about 20%, almost exclusively due to reproduction. First year and subsequent annual survivorship rates averaged 40% and 75%, respectively. Most individuals lived no longer than 10 years. Compared with Mojave Desert populations, Colorado Desert S. obesus demonstrated earlier maturity, higher reproductive rates, higher first year survival and lower adult survivorship. High reproductive rates and first year survival were attributable to the predictability of mild winters and summer rainfall. Such conditions promoted lower adult survivorship because of associated costs of reproduction and predation. Attempts were made to predict population age class structure from winter precipitation regression models. Such a procedure appears reliable for predicting age-specific fecundity and therefore is a useful tool for management practices.

This dissertation analyzes the intersections of different forms of migrations, and how such intersections shape and are shaped by gendered kinship and care relationships. In other words, I analyze how the ways in which people relate, and how they define and redefine their gender identities as they become mobile in diverse ways. This dissertation is based on ethnographic research conducted with the Zapotec community of Zegache, Oaxaca. Research took place in Oaxaca (Mexico), Mexico City, and Oregon. I approach the study of different migrations from a transborder perspective that is able to better capture how the crossing of different borders (national, regional, ethnic, rural and urban) has different meanings and consequences for migrant men and women from Zegache. I analyze how different forms of mobility and migration are constructed and discussed in scholarly works and “in the field.” The definition of who is a migrant is even more complicated as we consider that men and women from Zegache often engage in more than one form of migration. Thus, women who migrate to Mexico City sometimes will also migrate to the U.S. Even if women don’t migrate, they are increasingly becoming mobile and commuting to Oaxaca City, and are often in families with transnational migrants. In the same manner, men who join the military (which, I argue, is a form of migration) often become transnational migrants themselves. This dissertation looks at the articulations of intersecting migrations shows how relatedness and gender identities become constructed and re-constructed when people become mobile.

ix, 127 p. : col. ill., col. maps / Community mediation programs exist to provide the general public a low cost and efficient way to resolve disputes peacefully. Community mediation is a voluntary process in which skilled mediators facilitate a conversation between the disputants, but do not advocate or impose solutions. I question whether community mediation practices, mediators and mediation programs are responsive to minority cultures. This thesis conceptualizes culturally appropriate dimensions to add to dispute resolution practices for a Latino demographic. Using a comparative analysis of community mediation programs in Oaxaca, Mexico and in Oregon, I highlight areas of departure from more traditional views of mediation. I argue that such programs will be more effective by incorporating practices grounded in the Latino cultural context of each region, including greater attention to group-oriented priorities within families, engaging in more personal contact with disputants, provision of childcare, enhancing efforts to attract Spanish-speaking mediators, and training mediators in intra-generational cultural competency. / Committee in charge: Anita M.Weiss, Chairperson; Tim Hicks, Member; Galen Martin, Member

The aim of this thesis is to compare possibilities of the pitch extraction methods in the monophonic melody. There is presented the overview of the methods based on the speech pitch extraction techniques in the thesis. These methods uses frequency, time and „cepstral“ domain. They are compared in the term of success of the detection of various test signals. The part of the thesis specification is the implementation of these methods in Matlab. There are described basics of sound features at the beginning of this work. The overview of the musical tuning systems is mentioned and there is described a problem of the determination of the pitch from the detected frequency. There is considered an issue of MIDI protocol in the next part of the work. There are described the brief history and the essential structure of MIDI protocol. The last task of the work was the creation of the program in C language. The purpose of the program is to analyze the monophonic melody in audio signal form and assign note numbers to the detected sounds according to MIDI specification. After that the numbers are written into the standard MIDI file (SMF). There was implemented a correlation pitch detection algorithm in this program. It had the best results as compared to the others. There was used the fast correlation based on Fast Fourier transformation to accelerate computing of the correlation. The program was created in the form of MEX function, which provides various possibilities to be used in Matlab. There was also attached the description of the FFTW library, which was used to compute FFT.

L'ionosphère du côté nuit de Mars reste encore à ce jour une zone mystérieuse et peu connue de l'environnement Martien. Les déplétions d'électrons suprathermiques sont des structures spécifiques à cette région, observées jusqu'à présent par trois satellites : Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars EXpress (MEX) et Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN). Leur étude permet aussi bien l'observation de la structure et de la dynamique de l'ionosphère du côté nuit que celle de l'atmosphère neutre, de la topologie magnétique martienne, ainsi que l'étude de l'échappement atmosphérique de Mars. Des structures aussi différentes que les cornets magnétiques, les couches de courants ou encore le terminateur ultra-violet peuvent être examinées à travers les déplétions d'électrons suprathermiques, de par les mécanismes à l'origine de leur présence du côté nuit de Mars. Le but principal de ma thèse a été de tirer parties des trois jeux de données offerts par les satellites MGS, MEX et MAVEN pour mieux comprendre les mécanismes à l'origine des déplétions d'électrons suprathermiques observées du côté nuit ainsi que leur impact sur la structure et la dynamique de l'ionosphère du côté nuit. Dans cette optique, trois critères simples adaptés à chaque mission ont été développés pour identifier les déplétions d'électrons suprathermiques dans une base de données allant de 1999 à 2017. Une étude statistique a révélé la présence d'une région de transition autour de 170 km d'altitude séparant la région collisionnelle dans laquelle les déplétions d'électrons suprathermiques sont directement dues à l'absorption des électrons par le CO_2 atmosphérique, et la région non-collisionnelle dans laquelle elles sont principalement dues aux boucles fermées de champs magnétique d'origine crustale. La compréhension de ces mécanismes m'a permis d'estimer la localisation du terminateur ultra-violet. Celui-ci est situé en moyenne ~120 km au-dessus du terminateur optique. Cette altitude varie entre le côté soir et le côté matin, et une variation saisonnière est prédite par les modèles atmosphériques. / The nightside ionosphere of Mars still remains an unfamiliar and mysterious place. Nightside suprathermal electron depletions are specific features of this region which have been observed at Mars by three spacecraft to date: Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars EXpress (MEX) and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. Their study enables the observation of the nightside ionosphere structure and dynamics as well as the underlying neutral atmosphere, the specific Martian magnetic topology, and possible conduits for atmospheric escape. Structures as different as magnetic cusps, current sheets or the UV terminator can be investigated through suprathermal electron depletions, due to the processes leading to their observation on the nightside of Mars. The main goal of my PhD has been to use the complementarity of the three missions MGS, MEX, and MAVEN to understand the different mechanisms at the origin of suprathermal electron depletions and their implication on the structure and the dynamics of the nightside ionosphere. In this context, three simple criteria adapted to each mission have been implemented to identify suprathermal electron depletions from 1999 to 2017. A statistical study reveals a transition region near 170 km altitude separating the collisional region where suprathermal electron depletions are directly due to electron absorption by atmospheric CO_2 and the collisionless region where they are mainly due to electron exclusion by closed crustal magnetic field loops. Understanding of these phenomena enables me to estimate the location of the UV terminator. It appears to be located ~120 km above the optical terminator, though this location is different between the dawn and dusk terminator and is expected to vary throughout the different Martian seasons.

In a generic wireless network where the activation of a transmission link is subject to its signal-to-noise-and-interference ratio (SINR) constraint, one of the most fundamental and yet challenging problem is to find the maximum number of simultaneous transmissions. In this thesis, we consider and study in detail the problem of maximum link activation in wireless networks based on the SINR model. Integer Linear Programming has been used as the main tool in this thesis for the design of algorithms. Fast algorithms have been proposed for the delivery of near-optimal results time-efficiently. With the state-of-art Gurobi optimization solver, both the conventional approach consisting of all the SINR constraints explicitly and the exact algorithm developed recently using cutting planes have been implemented in the thesis. Based on those implementations, new solution algorithms have been proposed for the fast delivery of solutions. Instead of considering interference from all other links, an interference range has been proposed. Two scenarios have been considered, namely the optimistic case and the pessimistic case. The optimistic case considers no interference from outside the interference range, while the pessimistic case considers the interference from outside the range as a common large value. Together with the algorithms, further enhancement procedures on the data analysis have also been proposed to facilitate the computation in the solver.

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Today companies (especially large companies whose employees make a lot of international business trips) often have very large telephone bills. While international roaming technically works with GSM, the cost of phone calls from one country to another are often much higher than calls within a country. Despite political pressure to reduce the costs of roaming within the European Union, the cost of phone calls from one country to another are often quite expensive. A cost-saving solution is eagerly desired by many firms. OptiCall Solutions AB has designed an integrated system called the Dial over Data (DoD) solution. In this scheme, a caller sends a data request to the DoD server instead of directly making a call to the party that they wish to speak with. The DoD solution uses an Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange (IP-PBX) to make two Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) calls, one to the caller and another to the callee, then bridges these two calls. To realize cost savings, the cost of these two calls and the cost of the infrastructure necessary to make the two calls and to bridge them must be lower than the cost of the direct call. Call Through is a service for making cheap international calls which is provided by many telecommunications companies. Instead of making a direct call to the party the caller wants to speak with, the caller makes a call to the local call-through service access number. The caller dials the actual callee’s number after the call is established. The service provider then makes a call to the callee and bridges the two calls. The caller only needs to pay for a local call and the service subscription fee, rather than the expensive international call fee. This can greatly reduce the costs for user who need to make a lot international calls. Today, many companies use such a call-through service in order to reduce the total cost of their employees’ calls. Additionally, the Mobile Extension (MEX) is a concept which gives mobile users the ability to use their mobile phone in the same manner as their fixed office phone, for example, by providing services such as setting presence and transferring a call. In addition, the user should experience a consistent interface, for example the calling number displayed for the callee should always be a number that the callee could use to return the call. In this thesis project, a mobile extension application called ‘OptiCaller’ based on the Symbian OS was developed and evaluated. This application is part of the DoD solution and provides client side functionality. Furthermore, it supports making call-through calls and using the MEX functions. Additionally, it is designed and implemented in a flexible way so that it can work with a variety of different PBX solutions. A provisioning system called ‘OptiCaller Provisioning System’ was also designed and evaluated. This provisioning system was tailored for the ‘OptiCaller’. It provides administrators a platform to manage the OptiCaller application on the end-users’ mobile phones. / Idag har företag (i synnerhet stora företag vars anställda gör en hel del internationella affärsresor) ofta mycket stora telefonräkningar. Även om internationell roaming fungerar tekniskt i GSM så är kostnaden för telefonsamtal från ett land till ett annat ofta mycket högre än samtal inom ett land. Trots politiska påtryckningar för att minska roamingkostnaderna inom EU, så är kostnader för telefonsamtal från ett land till ett annat ofta ganska dyra. En lösning som kan minska dessa kostnader välkomnas av många företag. OptiCall Solutions AB har utvecklat ett integrerat system som kallas Dial över Data (DoD). I detta system skickas först en samtalsbegäran från en klient till en server istället för att klienten direkt ringer ett samtal till den som de vill tala med. DoD systemet använder Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange (IP-PBX) för att göra två Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) samtal, en till den som ringer och en den uppringda parten. Sedan kopplas dessa två samtal ihop. Värt att beakta är att kostnaden för denna infrastruktur samt att producera två samtal i stället för ett bör vara lägre än kostnaden för ett direkt samtal. Samtalskort är en tjänst för att göra billiga internationella samtal vilket erbjuds av flera telekommunikationsföretag. Istället för att göra ett direkt samtal till den som den uppringande vill tala med, gör först ett samtal till den lokala call-service noden. Med hjälp av en transparent klient så behöver användaren inte själv ringa call-service noden utan det sker helt automatik. Väl besvarat av call-service noden så kopplas samtalet till den destination användaren vill ringa till. Den som ringer behöver bara betala för ett lokalsamtal och tjänstens prenumerationsavgift. Detta kan kraftigt minska kostnaderna för användare som gör en hel del utlandssamtal. Idag är det även många företag som tillhandahåller en sådan funktion till sina anställda för att minska den totala kostnaden för deras samtal. Mobile Extension (MEX) är ett begrepp som ger mobila användare möjlighet att använda sin mobiltelefon på samma sätt som sina fasta kontorstelefon, till exempel genom att tillhandahålla tjänster såsom inställningen närvarostatus och koppling ett samtal. Användaren bör uppleva ett konsekvent gränssnitt, till exempel att det uppringande numret som visas alltid bör kunna användas för att ringa tillbaka till den som ringt. I detta examensarbete har en så kallad mobil anknytning tillämpning "OptiCaller", baserad på Symbian OS, utvecklats och utvärderats. Denna applikation är en del av DoD lösningen och ger funktionalitet på klientsidan. Den har även stöd för samtalskortfunktioner och MEX funktioner. Den är dessutom utformad på ett flexibelt sätt så att den kan arbeta med en rad olika PBX lösningar. Ett system för provisionering anpassat för OptiCaller kallat ”OptiCaller Provisioning System" har också framtagits och utvärderats. Det ger administratören en plattform för att administrera OptiCaller klienter i en större skala och hanterar såväl installation samt inställningar av OptiCaller klienter på mobiltelefoner.

This master thesis deals with real-time algorithms and techniques for face detection and facetracking in videos. A new approach is presented where optical flow information is incorporatedinto the Viola-Jones face detection algorithm, allowing the algorithm to update the expectedposition of detected faces in the next frame. This continuity between video frames is not exploitedby the original algorithm from Viola and Jones, in which face detection is static asinformation from previous frames is not considered.In contrast to the Viola-Jones face detector and also to the Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi tracker, theproposed face tracker preserves information about near-positives.In general terms the developed algorithm builds a likelihood map from results of the Viola-Jones algorithm, then computes the optical flow between two consecutive frames and finallyinterpolates the likelihood map in the next frame by the computed flow map. Faces get extractedfrom the likelihood map using image segmentation techniques. Compared to the Viola-Jonesalgorithm an increase in stability as well as an improvement of the detection rate is achieved.Firstly, the real-time face detection algorithm from Viola and Jones is discussed. Secondly theauthor presents methods which are suitable for tracking faces. The theoretical overview leadsto the description of the proposed face tracking algorithm. Both principle and implementationare discussed in detail. The software is written in C++ using the Open Computer Vision Libraryas well as the Matlab MEX interface.The resulting face tracker was tested on the Boston Head Tracking Database for which groundtruth information is available. The proposed face tracking algorithm outperforms the Viola-Jones face detector in terms of average detection rate and temporal consistency.

From the Proceedings of the 1976 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 29-May 1, 1976, Tucson, Arizona / Energy budget evaluations of evapotranspiration from saltcedar were carried out on the flood plain of the Rio Grande River, near Bernardo, New Mexico. The site was adjacent to the Bureau of Reclamation's lysimeter study of water use by saltcedar. The energy budget for the cloudless day of June 14, 1975, revealed that energy gains from net radiation totaled 432 cal/cm² , while energy losses (in cal/cm2 ), were 14 to stored energy, 31 to convection, and 387 to evapotranspiration (ET). The energy loss to ET is equivalent to the latent energy contained in about 6.5 mm of water. The energy budget values are reasonable for a phreatophyte community in a semi-arid environment. The latent energy loss compares favorably with 401 cal/cm² measured by three lysimeters, although there were discrepancies in timing and amounts of loss among the individual lysimeters. The mean canopy diffusion resistance was 1.90 sec/cm over a 10-hour daytime period on June 14. The mean resistance was combined with vapor pressure deficit to predict lysimeter ET on three subsequent days. The agreement was within 12 percent, which suggests that diffusion resistance may be useful for simple ET predictions.