"Complex event processing (CEP) has become increasingly important in modern applications, ranging from supply chain management for RFID tracking to real-time intrusion detection. These monitoring applications must detect complex event pattern sequences in event streams. However, the state-of-art in the CEP literature such as SASE, ZStream or Cayuga either do not support the specification of nesting for pattern queries altogether or they limit the nesting of non-occurrence expressions over composite event types. A recent work by Liu et al proposed a nested complex event pattern expression language, called NEEL (Nested Complex Event Language), that supports the specification of the non-occurrence over complex expressions. However, their work did not carefully consider predicate handling in these nested queries, especially in the context of complex negation. Yet it is well-known that predicate specification is a critical component of any query language. To overcome this gap, we now design a nested complex event pattern expression language called NEEL+, as an extension of the NEEL language, specifying nested CEP queries with predicates. We rigorously define the syntax and semantics of the NEEL+ language, with particular focus on predicate scoping and predicate placement. Accordingly, we introduce a top-down execution paradigm which recursively computes a nested NEEL+ query from the outermost query to the innermost one. We integrate predicate evaluation as part of the overall query evaluation process. Moreover, we design two optimization techniques that reduce the computation costs for processing NEEL+ queries. One, the intra-query method, called predicate push-in, optimizes each individual query component of a nested query by pushing the predicate evaluation into the process of computing the query rather than evaluating predicates at the end of the computation of that particular query. Two, the inter-query method, called predicate shortcutting, optimizes inter-query predicate evaluation. That is, it evaluates the predicates that correlate different query components within a nested query by exploiting a light weight predicate short cut. The NEEL+ system caches values of the equivalence attributes from the incoming data stream. When the computation starts, the system checks the existence of the attribute value of the outer query component in the cache and the predicate acts as a shortcut to early terminate the computation. Lastly, we conduct experimental studies to evaluate the CPU processing resources of the NEEL+ System with and without optimization techniques using real-world stock trading data streams. Our results confirm that our optimization techniques when applied to NEEL+ in a rich variety of cases result in a 10 fold faster query processing performance than the NEEL+ system without optimization."

Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have found use in a wide variety of biomedical applications including hyperthermia, imaging and drug delivery. Certain physical properties, such as the ability to generate heat in response to an alternating magnetic field, make these structures ideal for such purposes. This study's objective was to elucidate the mechanisms primarily responsible for RF MNP heating and determine how such processes affect polymer solutions that might be useful in drug delivery. 15-20 nm magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles at 0.2% and 0.5% concentrations were heated with RF fields of different strengths (200 Oe, 400 Oe and 600 Oe) in water and in 0.5% gellan gum solution. Mixing and fan cooling were used in an attempt to improve accuracy of data collection. Specific absorption rate (SAR) values were determined experimentally for each combination of solvent, concentration and field strength. Theoretical calculation of SAR was performed using a model based on linear response theory. Mixing yielded greater precision in experimental determination of SAR while the effects of cooling on this parameter were negligible. Solutions with gellan gum displayed smoother heating over time but no significant changes in SAR values. This was attributed to low polymer concentration and lack of structural phase transition. The LRT model was found to be adequate for calculating SAR at low polymer concentration and was useful in identifying Neel relaxation as the dominant heating process. Heating trials with MNPs in 2% agar confirmed Neel relaxation to be primarily responsible for heat generation in the particles studied.

This thesis examines two works (My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in Tibet) by Alexandra David-Neel. These works subvert the self/other dichotomies both necessary to and critiqued by postcolonial theory. Central to this study is an examination of a claim by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama that David-Neel creates an "authentic" picture of Tibet. In order to do this the first chapter establishes a working definition of authenticity based on both Western philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism. This project argues that the advanced meditation techniques practiced by Alexandra David-Neel allow her to access a transcendent self that is able to overcome the self/other dichotomy. It also discusses the ways in which abjection and limit experiences enhance this breakdown. Finally, this thesis examines the roles that gender and a near absence of female Tibetan voice play in complicating the problems of self, subjectivity, and authenticity within these texts. / by Robert William Jones II. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

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To portray women without objectifying them is an intentional, political act. The art historical tradition is to paint women to extol their sexual beauty and to encourage possessiveness. There is a new guard of women painters who provide a counterpoint to this tradition by depicting a more multifaceted version of the female psyche. I align myself as an artist with them by attempting to broaden the depiction of women as subjects in painting. My subjects are beautiful and observable, but not consumable. They are more public than private and more iconic than intimate. My paintings have a strong connection to traditional portraiture in both style and technique. However, my subjects are contemporized through the use of modern fashion, unexpected facial expressions, unique color relationships and photographic cropping. / text

In the years immediately following World War II in Vancouver, native Northwest Coast images and objects were frequently made visible in the public spaces of the city, claimed and exchanged physically and symbolically in events involving both aboriginal and non-native participants. Like the political and social relations surrounding them, the meaning and purpose of these objects and images was, arguably, pliable and constantly shifting. The Totemland Pole, commissioned in 1950 by Vancouver's fledgling Totemland Society, and designed by local Kwakwaka'wakw carver Ellen Neel, was one such object-as-symbol. Numerous individuals and communities, aboriginal as well as non-native, were implicated in the object's production. Following anthropologist Anthony Cohen's work on social symbols in The Symbolic Construction of Community, I argue that while the symbol itself was held in common, its meaning varied with its participants' unique orientations to it. The differently motivated parties, specifically the work's creator, Ellen Neel, and its commissioners, the Totemland Society, attributed divergent meaning to the Totemland Pole simultaneously. As Cohen suggests, I propose that this difference did not lead to argument. Rather it was the form of the Totemland Pole itself, its impreciseness or "malleability," within the particular socio-political climate of its production, which enabled these divergent meanings to co-exist. In order to investigate ways in which the Totemland Pole was understood simultaneously as symbolically meaningful, this project attempts to map out the subject positions of and relations of power between Ellen Neel and the members of the Totemland Society, in relation to the particulars of the local historical moment. The forgotten details of the Totemland Commission and the lack of a legitimizing discourse of Neel's production, both fuelled by the gendered, class and race inflected politics of knowledge construction, have necessitated that the concept of absence be fundamental to my project. I have therefore approached the Totemland Commission from a number of surrounding institutional and social discourses, which form trajectories I see as intersecting at the site of the Totemland Pole. Any one of these trajectories may have been taken as the singular approach for the investigation of such an object. However, I wish to deny the autonomy normally granted these discursive fields, emphasizing instead the ways they are interdependent and may operate in tandem to enrich our understanding of an object which was the result of, and relevant to, shared histories.

In the years immediately following World War II in Vancouver, native Northwest Coast images and objects were frequently made visible in the public spaces of the city, claimed and exchanged physically and symbolically in events involving both aboriginal and non-native participants. Like the political and social relations surrounding them, the meaning and purpose of these objects and images was, arguably, pliable and constantly shifting. The Totemland Pole, commissioned in 1950 by Vancouver's fledgling Totemland Society, and designed by local Kwakwaka'wakw carver Ellen Neel, was one such object-as-symbol. Numerous individuals and communities, aboriginal as well as non-native, were implicated in the object's production. Following anthropologist Anthony Cohen's work on social symbols in The Symbolic Construction of Community, I argue that while the symbol itself was held in common, its meaning varied with its participants' unique orientations to it. The differently motivated parties, specifically the work's creator, Ellen Neel, and its commissioners, the Totemland Society, attributed divergent meaning to the Totemland Pole simultaneously. As Cohen suggests, I propose that this difference did not lead to argument. Rather it was the form of the Totemland Pole itself, its impreciseness or "malleability," within the particular socio-political climate of its production, which enabled these divergent meanings to co-exist. In order to investigate ways in which the Totemland Pole was understood simultaneously as symbolically meaningful, this project attempts to map out the subject positions of and relations of power between Ellen Neel and the members of the Totemland Society, in relation to the particulars of the local historical moment. The forgotten details of the Totemland Commission and the lack of a legitimizing discourse of Neel's production, both fuelled by the gendered, class and race inflected politics of knowledge construction, have necessitated that the concept of absence be fundamental to my project. I have therefore approached the Totemland Commission from a number of surrounding institutional and social discourses, which form trajectories I see as intersecting at the site of the Totemland Pole. Any one of these trajectories may have been taken as the singular approach for the investigation of such an object. However, I wish to deny the autonomy normally granted these discursive fields, emphasizing instead the ways they are interdependent and may operate in tandem to enrich our understanding of an object which was the result of, and relevant to, shared histories. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

São apresentados resultados obtidos a partir de difração de raios-X (DRX), difração de nêutrons (DN), susceptibilidade magnética (X(T)), magnetização (M(H)), espectroscopia Mõssbauer (EM) e calor específico (Cp) de amostras do sistema FexCo1-x Ta206. Difratogramas de DRX e de DN e as curvas M(H) indicam que as amostras estão bem cristalizadas e homogêneas, e que o sistema é uma solução sólida para toda faixa de substituição Fe -> Co. Os ajustes de DN revelam fases magnéticas com dois vetores de propagação (::I::~~ ~) para o CoTa206 e (~ O ~) e (O ~ ~) para o FeTa206' A segunda configuração permanece a mesma para as amostras ricas em Fe (0,46 :S x < 1,00), enquanto que as amostras ricas em Co (0,09 :S x < 0,46) apresentam configuração magnética indexada pelos vetores de propagação (::I::~~ O). O diagrama de fase temperatura vs. x exibe um ponto bicrítico em torno de T = 4,9 K e x = 0,46. A temperatura de Néel máxima das região rica em Fe é 9,5 K, e 7,1 K para a região rica em Co. No ponto bicrítico, o sistema mostra coexistência de ambas estruturas magnéticas. Esse comportamento bicrítico é interpretado como sendo induzido pelas competições entre as diferentes fases magnéticas e pela variação das propriedades cristalográficas.

São apresentados resultados obtidos a partir de difração de raios-X (DRX), difração de nêutrons (DN), susceptibilidade magnética (X(T)), magnetização (M(H)), espectroscopia Mõssbauer (EM) e calor específico (Cp) de amostras do sistema FexCo1-x Ta206. Difratogramas de DRX e de DN e as curvas M(H) indicam que as amostras estão bem cristalizadas e homogêneas, e que o sistema é uma solução sólida para toda faixa de substituição Fe -> Co. Os ajustes de DN revelam fases magnéticas com dois vetores de propagação (::I::~~ ~) para o CoTa206 e (~ O ~) e (O ~ ~) para o FeTa206' A segunda configuração permanece a mesma para as amostras ricas em Fe (0,46 :S x < 1,00), enquanto que as amostras ricas em Co (0,09 :S x < 0,46) apresentam configuração magnética indexada pelos vetores de propagação (::I::~~ O). O diagrama de fase temperatura vs. x exibe um ponto bicrítico em torno de T = 4,9 K e x = 0,46. A temperatura de Néel máxima das região rica em Fe é 9,5 K, e 7,1 K para a região rica em Co. No ponto bicrítico, o sistema mostra coexistência de ambas estruturas magnéticas. Esse comportamento bicrítico é interpretado como sendo induzido pelas competições entre as diferentes fases magnéticas e pela variação das propriedades cristalográficas.