No description available.

Killer whales are the oceans’ apex predator and are known to have important effects on ecosystems. At Subantarctic Marion Island, southern Indian Ocean, they have only been studied opportunistically, resulting in limited knowledge of their ecosystem impact here. This dissertation describes the prey and seasonal abundance, estimates the population size and assesses the predatory impact of killer whales on seals and penguins at Marion Island, using dedicated and opportunistic shore-based observations and photographic identification, from 2006 to 2009. During 823 sightings of killer whales at Marion Island (2006 to 2009) 48 predation events were recorded; in only 10 cases could prey be identified. Killer whales fed on fur seals, elephant seals and penguins. Constant effort (dedicated) observations (259 hours, 2008 to 2009) showed that killer whale abundance, which peaked in September to December with a secondary peak in April to May, is linked to the abundance of seals and penguins. Mark-recapture analyses were performed using nearly 10 000 photographs taken from 2006 to 2009. Following careful quality control criteria 37 individuals were identified and a population size of 42 (95% CI = 35-50) individuals estimated using the open population POPAN parameterization in the software program MARK. The analytical approach is more rigorous than that used in any previous population size assessment at Marion Island. Finally, the above data were integrated to assess whether top-down control of seal and penguin populations at Marion Island is generally plausible using a simple process of elimination. Based on published data I predicted the energetic ingestion requirements of adult male and female killer whales as 1 394 MJ.day-1 and 1 028 MJ.day-1, respectively. Expanding these requirements to the 37 killer whales photographically identified at Marion Island, the population requires 40 600MJ.day-1. Based on available energy density and mass data, I predicted the energy content of available seal and penguin prey and calculated the rates at which killer whales would consume these prey in various scenarios. Penguins and Subantarctic fur seals are relatively insensitive to killer whale predation owing to their large population sizes (10 000s to 100 000s), conversely, the smaller populations (100s to 1 000s) of Antarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals are sensitive to predation, particularly the latter as they have a high energy content (approximately 2 000 to 9 000 MJ). Populations of these seals are currently increasing or stable and I conclude that presently killer whale predation is not driving population declines, although they clearly have the potential for regulation of these smaller populations. Thus, if population sizes were reduced by bottom-up processes, if killer whale diet shifted, or if prey availability changed, top-down control by killer whales could become significant. This study provides baseline information for the informed management and conservation of killer whales at Marion Island, identifies avenues for further research, and provides a foundation for the continuation of structured and dedicated killer whale research at Marion Island. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Zoology and Entomology / unrestricted

Ce mémoire court a comme objectif d’appliquer le concept de responsabilité politique développé par Iris Marion Young dans Responsibility for Justice, ainsi que son modèle de connexion sociale, au contexte du recyclage des déchets électriques et électroniques. Au premier chapitre, il sera question en un premier temps d’explorer comment Young définit ses concepts et comment ils diffèrent des conceptions plus traditionnelles de la responsabilité. Au chapitre suivant, il s’agira de comprendre à quels problèmes philosophiques Young tente de répondre. Il sera intéressant ici de voir comment Young se distingue de J. Rawls, de comment elle s’inspire d’H. Arendt et comment elle se distance de l’approche nationaliste de D. Miller. Enfin, au dernier chapitre, ce travail termine par une application du modèle de Young au contexte du recyclage des déchets électriques et électroniques. Bien qu’il y ait des similitudes avec l’étude de cas présenté par Young dans Responsibility for Justice, des différences marquées dans les types d’interactions sociales à la source des injustices structurelles illustrent la pertinence d’utiliser le modèle de Young afin d’entamer une réflexion sur les solutions possibles. Ce mémoire court se veut donc être une sorte d’hommage à la pensée de Young qui est toujours d’actualité. / The objective of this short-form master thesis is to put in application the concept of political responsibility and its social connexion model developed by Iris Marion Young in Responsibility for Justice to the context of e-waste. In the first chapter, we will start by exploring how Young define her concepts and how they differ from traditional conceptions of responsibility. In the second chapter, we will see which philosophical questions Young wanted to address with her model. It will be interesting to see how she distinguishes her theory to the one of J. Rawls, how she seeks inspiration in the thoughts of H. Arendt, and how she distances herself from the national conception of responsibility developed by D. Miller. Finally, in the last chapter, this work ends with an application of Young’s social connection model to the context of e-waste. While there are some similarities with the case study presented by Young in Responsibility for Justice, the context of e-waste provides a different insight on the many types of social interactions at the source of structural injustices, and how Young’s theory is useful for a reflection about the possible solutions. This work is a kind of tribute to the thoughts of Young which are still relevant today.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The focus of this study was to document phosphorus (P) and metal cycling in the Eagle Creek Reservoir (ECR), located in Indianapolis, central Indiana. Eagle Creek Reservoir serves the drinking water needs of over 80,000 residents. Within the last several years, algal blooms have created stress to the local treatment facility. The objective of this study was to examine how P cycling from oxygen deprived bottom sediments affects the algal bloom productivity. As such, cores were retrieved from different water depths (7 and 16 m) from portions of the reservoir where high surficial concentrations of organic matter and P were found to occur. The dried samples were analyzed for P, sulfur, iron, barium, cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc, using a strong acid digestion technique. The samples were also analyzed for iron-bound P (Fe-P), authigenic P (A-P), detrital P (D-P), organic P (O-P), reducible iron, and reducible manganese, using a sequential extraction technique. The results from the study showed moisture contents ranged from 16 to 76% and organic matter contents ranged from 2 to 12 wt%. The dry bulk densities were determined to be between 0.27 and 1.68 g cm3. The average percentages of P in ECS-1, as determined by the sequential extraction method, were as follows: Fe-P, 66.2%; A-P, 8.1%; D-P, 4.8%; and O-P, 20.9%. The average percentages of P in ECS-3, as determined by the sequential extraction method, were as follows: Fe-P, 77.0%; A-P, 6.5%; D-P, 2.8%; and O-P, 16.7%. To determine relationships between elements, correlations were calculated. When looking as the relationships between the P fractions and reducible Fe, differences were observed between the different water depths. There was less correlation between reducible Fe and Fe-P, and between O-P and Fe-P, in ECS-3, indicating that Fe-P is more efficiently dissolved and recycled in the deep portion of ECR. The study shows that the Fe-P flux, caused by the iron redox cycle, is persistent and will continue to influence algal bloom productivity in the deeper portions of ECR.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Zoology and Entomology / unrestricted

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study explores relationships between temperate stream geochemistry and watershed land cover in two temperate streams, Fishback Creek and School Branch Creek, located in a rapidly urbanizing area on the northwest side of Indianapolis in Eagle Creek Watershed, Indiana. The temporal and spatial patterns of NO3-N, PO4, DOC, SiO2, Cl-, and Na+ were assessed to understand the influence of land cover on the magnitude and timing of water, chemical, and nutrient delivery to streams. Results of the study indicate that the influences of different land cover types on water delivery to streams and in-stream water quality vary seasonally and with respect to flow regime, that urbanization may result in decreased nitrate input, and that phosphate and dissolved organic carbon concentrations will likely remain constant as the watershed is developed. Results also indicate that riparian buffer downstream of intense agriculture lands dilutes high agricultural NO3-N concentrations, but not enough to return in-stream concentrations to natural levels.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Environmental planning is very cumbersome work for environmentalists, government agencies like USDA and NRCS, and farmers. There are a number of conflicts and issues involved in such a decision making process. This research is based on the work to provide a common platform for environmental planning called WRESTORE (Watershed Restoration using Spatio-Temporal Optimization of Resources). We have designed a system that can be used to provide the best management practices for environmental planning. A distributed system was designed to combine high performance computing power of clusters/supercomputers in running various environmental model simulations. The system is designed to be a multi-user system just like a multi-user operating system. A number of stakeholders can log-on and run environmental model simulations simultaneously, seamlessly collaborate, and make collective judgments by visualizing their landscapes. In the research, we identified challenges in running such a system and proposed various solutions. One challenge was the lack of fast optimization algorithm. In our research, several algorithms are utilized such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Learning Automaton (LA). However, the criticism is that LA has a slow rate of convergence and that both LA and GA have the problem of getting stuck in local optima. We tried to solve the multi-objective problems using LA in batch mode to make the learning faster and accurate. The problems where the evaluation of the fitness functions for optimization is a bottleneck, like running environmental model simulation, evaluation of a number of such models in parallel can give considerable speed-up. In the multi-objective LA, different weight pair solutions were evaluated independently. We created their parallel versions to make them practically faster in computation. Additionally, we extended the parallelism concept with the batch mode learning. Another challenge we faced was in User Modeling. There are a number of User Modeling techniques available. Selection of the best user modeling technique is a hard problem. In this research, we modeled user's preferences and search criteria using an ANN (Artificial Neural Network). Training an ANN with limited data is not always feasible. There are many situations where a simple modeling technique works better if the learning data set is small. We formulated ways to fine tune the ANN in case of limited data and also introduced the concept of Deep Learning in User Modeling for environmental planning system.

Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)

本論文將用榮格的原型觀念(archetypes)探討瑪格麗特˙愛德伍小說《盲眼刺客》中的人物性格。 本論文由五章組成。第一章將大略介紹《盲眼刺客》的內容以及其評論。第二章將會介紹榮格對集體無意識(the collective unconscious)的概念以及其和原型概念的關連；接著，將會根據兩位新榮格學派的學者，瑪莉恩˙伍德曼(Marion Woodman)和卡蘿˙皮爾森(Carol S. Pearson)對原型理論的闡述，針對兩個原型加以探討──鬥士原型和殉道者原型。在父權社會的影響下，這兩個原型時常會被過度簡化成對兩性的刻板印象，而在這簡化過程裡，原本屬於這兩個原型的能量和複雜性都被忽視或壓抑了。 第三章始於對愛德伍小說人物的辯護，說明其人物並不是一般所說的刻版人物，而是充滿衝突與能量的原型人物。而後，我會把小說中的人物和象徵和神話及童話中的人物作連結。在一方面，我將會對於小說中的現實人物，如艾麗絲和蘿拉(Iris and Laura)，和小說中的象徵角色，盲眼刺客和獻祭少女，做連結且並討論；另一方面，我將會將這兩個象徵角色延伸出去，探討與之相關的神話或童話人物，或是，更上一層的原型人物。在第四章，我則會依據小說人物和其原型的關係加以剖析，檢視他們和其原型的認同狀況，及他們膨脹(Inflation)的程度。 在最後的第五章，將以原型的概念來詮釋小說中各個人物的悲劇做為總結。《盲眼刺客》中的每個人物都傾向於過份認同某個原型，而忽略了讓自我有平衡發展的重要性。 / This thesis is to discover the psychological depths of the characters in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin and to analyze them according to the Jungian conception of archetypes and the influence of archetypes upon the human psyche. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction, including the overview of the novel and its critical backgrounds. And Chapter Two introduces C.G. Jung’s conception of the collective unconscious and its relation with archetypes and follow with specific discussion of certain archetypes—the Warrior and the Martyr—mainly according to the theories of two neo-Jungian scholars, Marion Woodman and Carol S. Pearson. Since these two archetypes are often over-simplified to fit in gender stereotypes under the influence of patriarchal society, the energies and complexity of these archetypes are always neglected or repressed. Chapter Three begins with an argument that Atwood’s characters are not stereotypical but rather archetypal, for they possess the contradictory energies within them that are correspondent with that of archetypes. On the one hand, I discuss how the characters in the memoir are symbolized in the science-fiction allegory, being reflected as the blind assassin and the sacrificial maiden; on the other hand, I make a connection between the symbols of the novel—the blind assassin and sacrificial maiden—and the mythological and fairy-tale allusions, and further, the archetypes behind them. In Chapter Four, I examine the psychic problems of the characters according to their relations with the archetypes—to examine how much they identify unconsciously with the archetypes and the extent of their inflation. Finally, Chapter Five concludes with the archetypal explanation of the tragic life of the characters in the novel. Each of them is trapped in an overwhelming power of a certain archetype instead of having the ego balanced between these multiple archetypes, they turn themselves into mythical figures that are too rigid for humanity.

<p>Numera Nette Wermeld Enström.</p>