Forum: EU-Diplomatie im Jahre 2020

Digital geometry is the geometry of digital images. Compared to Euclid’s geometry, which has been studied for more than two thousand years, this field is very young. Efim Khalimsky’s topology on the integers, invented in the 1970s, is a digital counterpart of the Euclidean topology on the real line. The Khalimsky topology became widely known to researchers in digital geometry and computer imagery during the early 1990s. Suppose that a continuous function is defined on a subspace of an n-dimensional Khalimsky space. One question to ask is whether this function can be extended to a continuous function defined on the whole space. We solve this problem. A related problem is to characterize the subspaces on which every continuous function can be extended. Also this problem is solved. We generalize and solve the extension problem for integer-valued, Khalimsky-continuous functions defined on arbitrary smallest-neighborhood spaces, also called Alexandrov spaces. The notion of a digital straight line was clarified in 1974 by Azriel Rosenfeld. We introduce another type of digital straight line, a line that respects the Khalimsky topology in the sense that a line is a topological embedding of the Khalimsky line into the Khalimsky plane. In higher dimensions, we generalize this construction to digital Khalimsky hyperplanes, surfaces and curves by digitization of real objects. In particular we study approximation properties and topological separation properties. The last paper is about Khalimsky manifolds, spaces that are locally homeomorphic to n-dimensional Khalimsky space. We study different definitions and address basic questions such as uniqueness of dimension and existence of certain manifolds.

In the United States, there is a growing trend towards livable cities that facilitate physical, psychological, and social well-being. According to Congress of the New Urbanism, the great American suburb served by the automobile, does not fulfill all these functions. Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg points out three realms of satisfactory life as work, home and the ‘great good place’ as the third. The third place is one that facilitates barrier free social interaction, for example the American main-street, the English pub, French coffee house etc. Despite the ever existing need for such places, greater travel distances and the ever expanding needs of the automobile era have stripped our urban fabric of these. The Charter of the New Urbanism points out that in the American suburbs, neighborhood parks have the potential to serve as ‘third places.’ The twofold purpose of this research was to examine Steeplechase dog-park using Oldenburg’s Third Place construct as a starting point; and then to operationalize third place by establishing relationships between social characteristics and physical environment. Participant observation, casual conversations and ethnographic interviews were methods used to examine how residents use Steeplechase Park. The observation phase was used to understand on-site behavior, user interests and then establish contacts with participants for recruitment. In-depth interviews were then conducted to examine user history, relationships and attitudes toward the place. Data was coded and analyzed in NVivo 10 utilizing Oldenburg’s framework as a reference, the components of which were then examined for correlations to the physical elements. The findings of suggest that Steeplechase Park functions as a somewhat unique third place in terms of user motivation, companion animal/social lubricant, neutrality and inclusiveness of the place. Findings also establish useful links between the physical design of the space and the social activity; prospect-refuge supported by vegetation and layout, topography, shade, edges and access being the most important aspects. Additionally, lack of maintenance was established as a major concern to sustained use.

I present the results of a comprehensive assessment of companions to 454 solar-type stars within 25 pc. New observational aspects of this work include surveys for (1) very close companions with long-baseline interferometry at the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array, (2) close companions with speckle interferometry, and (3) wide proper motion companions identified by blinking multi-epoch archival images. I have also obtained and included unpublished results from extensive radial velocity monitoring programs. The many sources utilized enable a thorough evaluation of stellar and brown dwarf companions. The results presented here include eight new companion discoveries, four of which are wide common proper motion pairs discovered by blinking archival images, and four more are from the spectroscopic data. The overall observed fractions of single, double, triple, and higher order systems are 57%±3%, 33%±2%, 8%±1%, and 3%±1%, respectively, counting all stellar and brown dwarf companions. The incompleteness analysis indicates that only a few undiscovered companions remain in this well-studied sample, showing that a majority of the solar-type stars are single. Bluer, more massive stars are more likely to have companions than redder, less massive ones. I confirm earlier expectations that more active stars are more likely to have companions. A preliminary, but important indication is that brown dwarfs, like planets, prefer stars with higher metallicity, tentatively suggesting that brown dwarfs may form like planets when they are companions to stars. The period distribution is unimodal and roughly Gaussian with peak and median values of about 300 years. The period-eccentricity relation shows a roughly flat distribution beyond the circularization limit of about 12 days. The mass-ratio distribution shows a clear discontinuity near a value of one, indicating a preference for twins, which are not confined to short orbital periods, suggesting that stars form by multiple formation mechanisms. The ratio of planet hosts among single, binary, and multiple systems are statistically indistinguishable, suggesting that planets are as likely to form around single stars as they are around components of binary or multiple systems at sufficiently wide separations.

The focus of this thesis is to develop computational techniques for analysis of protein structures. We model protein structures as points in 3-dimensional space which in turn are modeled as weighted graphs. The problem of protein structure comparison is posed as a weighted graph matching problem and an algorithm motivated from the spectral graph matching techniques is developed. The thesis also proposes novel similarity measures by deriving kernel functions. These kernel functions allow the data to be mapped to a suitably defined Reproducing kernel Hilbert Space(RKHS), paving the way for efficient algorithms for protein structure classification. Protein structure comparison (structure alignment)is a classical method of determining overall similarity between two protein structures. This problem can be posed as the approximate weighted subgraph matching problem, which is a well known NP-Hard problem. Spectral graph matching techniques provide efficient heuristic solution for the weighted graph matching problem using eigenvectors of adjacency matrices of the graphs. We propose a novel and efficient algorithm for protein structure comparison using the notion of neighborhood preserving projections (NPP) motivated from spectral graph matching. Empirically, we demonstrate that comparing the NPPs of two protein structures gives the correct equivalences when the sizes of proteins being compared are roughly similar. Also, the resulting algorithm is 3 -20 times faster than the existing state of the art techniques. This algorithm was used for retrieval of protein structures from standard databases with accuracies comparable to the state of the art. A limitation of the above method is that it gives wrong results when the number of unmatched residues, also called insertions and deletions (indels), are very high. This problem was tackled by matching neighborhoods, rather than entire structures. For each pair of neighborhoods, we grow the neighborhood alignments to get alignments for entire structures. This results in a robust method that has outperformed the existing state of the art methods on standard benchmark datasets. This method was also implemented using MPI on a cluster for database search. Another important problem in computational biology is classification of protein structures into classes exhibiting high structural similarity. Many manual and semi-automatic structural classification databases exist. Kernel methods along with support vector machines (SVM) have proved to be a robust and principled tool for classification. We have proposed novel positive semidefinite kernel functions on protein structures based on spatial neighborhoods. The kernels were derived using a general technique called convolution kernel, and showed to be related to the spectral alignment score in a limiting case. These kernels have outperformed the existing tools when validated on a well known manual classification scheme called SCOP. The kernels were designed keeping the general problem of capturing structural similarity in mind, and have been successfully applied to problems in other domains, e.g. computer vision.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-234). Also available on the Internet.

現今正面臨警界大退休潮，約有近1萬多名警察將於民國106年前退休，以警專及特考班、警大畢業生，自民國101年起，一年2700人左右遞補，亦恐緩不濟急，以本人所服務之芳苑分局為例，民國103年度總編制名額為280名員警，目前僅剩247員額，民國100至103年退休名額30餘人至今仍無法獲得補足，再以芳苑分局偏遠派出所為例，如漢寶、永安、路上派出所編制員額才10名，總而言之，就整整少掉3個派出所警力，必須抽調其它繁重派出所警力暫時補充，以利調度，長期以來，若無法迅速獲得補齊，將對治安形成相當大的隱憂，芳苑分局所轄含二林鎮、竹塘鄉、芳苑鄉、大城鄉(82村里分居於12個分駐(派出)所，轄區面積有294.15平方公里，人口數12萬4328人，如何在警力未補齊之際，運用現有民力，如義警、民防、社區巡守隊協助警察共同維護轄區治安，實為當務之急。常言道警力有限，民力無窮，隨著社會結構的變遷，警察機關必須重新設定與變革化的制度，以適應新的時代的潮流與社會環境需求，而協勤民力運用已是西方先進國家防治犯罪政策的趨勢。本研究為瞭解運用協勤民力協助警察機關之執勤成效，而針對協勤民力人員與警察人員對於協勤認知、相互間認知的差異及執行成效的成果來進行研討分析，藉以發現問題與提出解決策略，俾供政府部門今後運用民力的施政參考，有助警察機關高階領導人決策制定及整體策略前瞻性思維。且協勤民力參與警察勤務執行不但能協助警察處理各項煩瑣的問題，且有助於社會治安與秩序的改善移風易俗及提升擴大警察對民眾服務面向，同時也是人力資源的充分開發，就協勤民力個人而言，也是個人人生最意義的追求，能促使社會變遷的力量是一種善的循環，實現公平正義的社會理想，進而追求世界大同的終極目標。 / Recently, the police force is seeing a wave of retirement. More than 10,000 police officers are about to be retired before 2017. From 2012, about 2700 graduates from Taiwan Police College and Central Police University and special test class replenish into the police force each year. However, supply does not meet demands. Take the FangYuan precinct which I served in for example: there should be 280 policemen in 2012, however, there are only 247 policemen. The 30 retirees during 2011 to 2014 have yet to be replaced. Remote police stations such as HanBao, YongAn and RuShang police station each have only 10 policemen. In other words, a shortage of 30 policemen is equivalent to losing three police stations. This shortage of officers has forced the precinct to deploy police force from busier police stations to replenish those in remote areas. If these vacancies remain unfilled for a long time, it will cause difficulties in fighting crime. The jurisdiction of FangYuan precint includes Erlin, ZhuTang, FangYuan, DaCheng. 12 police stations are distributed in a total of 82 villages. The area of jurisdiction is 294.15km2 and the population is 124K. How to use the existing resources (Volunteered police, community patrol team, civil defence) to help maintain the public safety during the time of shortage in police force is a priority. Police force is limited, but the civil power is infinite. With the changes in the social structure, police need to reassess and fix their rigid system in order to adapt to new social needs and the trend of times. How to use the civil power is the trend of western advanced countries’ crime prevention policy. The purpose of this research is to understand the effect of using the civil power in helping police. The different views towards helping with police tasks posed by the civil power and police will be analyzed to find problems and develop solutions. The research will serve for future reference for the government and aid leaders of the government and leaders of the police to establish policies. The participation of civil power not only can help police handle the business but also contribute to the public safety maintenance and expand the service of police. It is also an effective use of human resources. For people contributing to civil power, it is the pursuit of the meaning of life, because to promote social change is a cycle of goodness and realization of ideals of social justice. It is a step towards the ultimate goal of universal brotherhood. / 摘要 i Subject ii 謝誌 iii 第一章 緒論 1 第一節 研究背景與動機 1 第二節 研究目的 6 第三節 研究的範圍與限制 8 第四節 研究章節安排與架構 9 第五節 研究流程 10 第二章 協勤民力理論基礎與文獻探討 11 第一節 志願服務 11 第二節 公民參與 17 第三節 公部門運用志願服務組織相關理論 19 第四節 國外協勤民力協勤現況 30 第五節 彰化縣警察局協勤民力組織概述及協勤成效 32 第三章 研究方法 46 第一節 研究架構 46 第二節 研究對象 49 第三節 研究工具 54 第四章 研究結果與分析 64 第一節 警察人員基本資料分析 64 第二節 協勤民力人員基本資料分析 68 第三節 警察人員對於協勤民力工作看法分析 74 第四節 協勤民力人員對於協勤工作的看法分析 79 第五節 警察人員及協勤民力人員特性差異分析 84 第六節 警察人員及協勤民力人員對民力協勤的認知差異分析 103 第五章 結論與建議 107 第一節 研究結論 107 第二節 建議 116 第三節 文獻回顧及研究貢獻 122 參考文獻 124

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay 1 (with Olof Åslund and Matz Dahlberg): In this essay we investigate the impact of commuter train access on individual labor market outcomes. Our study considers the exogenous introduction of a commuter train linking locations in the northern part of Uppsala County (Sweden) to the regional employment center, considerably decreasing commuting times by public transit to the center for those living close to the pre-existing railroad. Using difference-in-differences matching techniques on comprehensive individual panel data spanning over a decade, our intention-to-treat estimates show that the reform had mainly no impact on the earnings and employment development among the affected individuals. Essay 2: In this essay I look into the role of public transit for residential sorting by studying how the introduction of a commuter train linking locations in the northern part of Uppsala County (Sweden) to the regional employment center affected migration patterns in the areas served. Using a difference-in-difference(-in-difference) approach and comprehensive individual level data, I find that the commuter train had a positive effect on overall in-migration to the areas served and no effect on the average out-migration rate from these areas. With regards to sorting based on labor market status, I find no evidence of sorting based on employment status but some evidence that the train introduction increased the probability of moving out of the areas served for individuals with high labor incomes relative to the probability for individuals with lower income. Considering sorting along other lines than labor market status, the analysis suggests that people born in non-western countries came to be particularly attracted towards the areas served by the commuter train as compared to other similar areas. Essay 3: In this essay I look into the relation between housing mix and social mix in metropolitan Stockholm (Sweden) over the period 1990-2008. Using entropy measures, I find that although the distribution of tenure types over metropolitan Stockholm became somewhat more even over the studied period, people living in different tenure types still to a large extent tended to live in different parts of the city in 2008. The degree of residential segregation was much lower between different population groups. I further find that the mix of family types, and over time also of birth region groups and income groups, was rather different between different tenure types in the same municipality. The mix of different groups however tended to be similar within different tenure types in the same neighborhood. While the entropy measures provide a purely descriptive picture, the findings thus suggest that tenure type mix could be more useful for creating social mix at the municipal level than for creating social mix at the neighborhood level. Essay 4 (with Matz Dahlberg): The last decade’s immigration to western European countries has resulted in a culturally and religiously more diverse population in these countries. This diversification manifests itself in several ways, where one is through new features in the cityscape. Using a quasi-experimental approach, essay 4 examines how one such new feature, public calls to prayer, affects neighborhood dynamics (house prices and migration). The quasi-experiment is based on an unexpected political process that lead way to the first public call to prayer from a mosque in Sweden combined with rich (daily) information on housing sales. While our results indicate that the public calls to prayer increased house prices closer to the mosque, we find no evidence that the public calls to prayer served as a driver of residential segregation between natives and people born abroad around the mosque in question (no significant effects on migration behavior). Our findings are consistent with a story where some people have a willingness to pay for the possibility to more fully exert their religion which puts an upward pressure on housing in the vicinity of a mosque with public calls to prayer.

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One of the most important issues in the study of Urban-Service Distribution is the choice of the unit of analysis. Because of the ready availability of various data at the level of residence units, census tracts have been the spatial units most commonly selected. In some cases, municipally defined service districts have also been selected, and they are, in fact, only the aggregates of several neighboring census tracts. The problem encountered in the current study is the fact that Census-based Neighborhoods such as census tracts and the aggregations of census tracts frequently do not correspond with commonly recognized neighborhoods experienced informally in daily life, and they do not match local residents' perceptions of their neighborhoods as social areas. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Resident-perceived Neighborhood Boundaries (as the alternative unit of analysis to conventionally-used Census-based Neighborhood Units) on the accessibility to public parks based on equity consideration and its relationship to park utilization. The study also addressed whether the neighborhood boundaries perceived by the actual residents may exhibit more actual neighborhood construct than Census-based Neighborhood Units when the relationship between park accessibility and utilization is considered. First, the results indicate that when Resident-perceived Neighborhood Boundaries are adopted, there is no significant change, either in accessibility measures or in the equity of public park distribution among neighborhoods of different social strata. Second, there was no significant relationship between parks accessibility and utilization, which means that even though a park may be closest to a household, it is not always true that the household will choose to use that park. Third, it was confirmed that the relationship between park accessibility and utilization was significantly affected by some utilization factors. That is, travel distances to the parks were significantly affected by different types of utilization factors and, according to the classification of park type, the affecting utilization factors were different. Lastly, as the spatial unit of analysis, Resident-perceived Neighborhood Boundaries do not significantly enhance the strength of the relationship between public services accessibility and utilization compared to using Census-based Neighborhood Units.