The recent growth in wireless communications presents a new challenge to multimedia communications. Digital image transmission is a very common form of multimedia communication. Due to limited bandwidth and broadcast nature of the wireless medium, it is necessary to compress and encrypt images before they are sent. On the other hand, it is important to efficiently utilize the limited energy in wireless devices. In a wireless device, two major sources of energy consumption are energy used for computation and energy used for transmission. Computation energy can be reduced by minimizing the time spent on compression and encryption. Transmission energy can be reduced by sending a smaller image file that is obtained by compressing the original highest quality image. Image quality is often sacrificed in the compression process. Therefore, users should have the flexibility to control the image quality to determine whether such a tradeoff is acceptable. It is also desirable for users to have control over image quality in different areas of the image so that less important areas can be compressed more, while retaining the details in important areas. To reduce computations for encryption, a partial encryption scheme can be employed to encrypt only the critical parts of an image file, without sacrificing security. This thesis proposes a scalable and secure image representation scheme that allows users to select different image quality and security levels. The binary space partitioning (BSP) tree presentation is selected because this representation allows convenient compression and scalable encryption. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is chosen as the encryption algorithm because it is fast and secure. Our experimental result shows that our new tree construction method and our pruning formula reduces execution time, hence computation energy, by about 90%. Our image quality prediction model accurately predicts image quality to within 2-3dB of the actual image PSNR.

Seed heteromorphism related to chasmogamous (CH) and cleistogamous (CL) seeds can have different ecological significance in species with different functional characteristics, competitive ability and palatability. Punagrass [<i>Achnatherum brachychaetum </i> (Godr.) Barkworth], an invasive, perennial grass is common in grasslands of Argentina and it is an aggressive weed in other parts of the world. <i>Flechilla grande</i> [<i>Nassella clarazii</i> (Ball) Barkworth] is a palatable perennial grass associated with the dominant "climax" vegetation in grasslands of Argentina. Seeds of the two grasses were collected from grasslands of Argentina, and growth chamber and greenhouse experiments were conducted to determine: 1) germination, dormancy breaking, and mass of CH and CL seeds of the two species 2) effects of contrasting range condition on germination and seed mass of punagrass, 3) the relative fitness of plants from CH and CL seeds, 4) if contrasting range condition affect fitness of CH plants of punagrass, and 5) the effect of maternal nutrient environments on CH and CL seeds and on fitness in the two species. Small CH seeds of high dispersal potential were less dormant than large CL seeds of low dispersal potential in punagrass. CH and CL seeds of flechilla grande had similar mass, germination, and response to dehulling. CL seed size and CL seed production of punagrass increased with good range condition. Increasing the maternal, nutrient environment enhanced germination of CH seeds, CL seed size, growth rate, development, biomass and seed production more in punagrass than flechilla grande. Under low nutrient conditions, flechilla grande produced a few large CH seeds. CH progeny of punagrass grew fast and developed rapidly as compared to CL progeny, which in turn produced many CH seeds. CH and CL seeds of flechilla grande had similar contribution to the fitness of adult plants. In both species, the ecological significance of having seed heteromorphism is that sibling competition is probably reduced by having more diverse offspring. Heavy grazing of competitive species such as flechilla grande may favours species as punagrass with many small CH seeds, high potential for colonization as well as large CL seeds for persistence in the seed bank and seedling competition.

This thesis explores efficient techniques for generating 3D reconstructions from imagery. Non-linear optimization is one of the core techniques used when computing a reconstruction and is a computational bottleneck for large sets of images. Since non-linear optimization requires a good initialization to avoid getting stuck in local minima, robust systems for generating reconstructions from images build up the reconstruction incrementally. A hierarchical approach is to split up the images into small subsets, reconstruct each subset independently and then hierarchically merge the subsets. Rigidly locking together portions of the reconstructions reduces the number of parameters needed to represent them when merging, thereby lowering the computational cost of the optimization. We present two techniques that involve optimizing with parts of the reconstruction rigidly locked together. In the first, we start by rigidly grouping the cameras and scene features from each of the reconstructions being merged into separate groups. Cameras and scene features are then incrementally unlocked and optimized until the reconstruction is close to the minimum energy. This technique is most effective when the influence of the new measurements is restricted to a small set of parameters. Measurements that stitch together weakly coupled portions of the reconstruction, though, tend to cause deformations in the low error modes of the reconstruction and cannot be efficiently incorporated with the previous technique. To address this, we present a spectral technique for clustering the tightly coupled portions of a reconstruction into rigid groups. Reconstructions partitioned in this manner can closely mimic the poorly conditioned, low error modes, and therefore efficiently incorporate measurements that stitch together weakly coupled portions of the reconstruction. We explain how this technique can be used to scalably and efficiently generate reconstructions from large sets of images.

The work presented in this thesis is dedicated to developing inexpensive quantum-chemical models that are able to produce smooth and physically correct potential energy curves for the dissociation of single covalent bonds. It is well known that the energies produced by many ab initio theories scaling as the fifth order with the system size (for instance, second-order Moller-Plesset (MP2) and Epstein-Nesbet perturbation theories) diverge at large interatomic separations. We show that the divergent behavior of such perturbation schemes is due to a small number of terms in the energy expressions. Then, we demonstrate that the self-consistent replacement of these terms by their analogs from the coupled cluster theory (such as CCSD) allows one to redress the erroneous behavior of the perturbation theories without the damage to the overall scaling. We also investigate the accuracy of these hybrid perturbation theory-coupled cluster theories near equilibrium geometry. Judging from the computed spectroscopic constants and shapes of the potential energy curves, one such model, denoted MP2-CCSD(II) in this work, performs consistently better than the MP2 theory at essentially the same computational cost.

As the distributed systems becomes popular, efficient load balancing systems taking better decisions must be designed. The most important reasons that necessitate load balancing in a distributed system are the heterogeneous hosts having different com- puting powers, external loads and the tasks running on different hosts but communi- cating with each other. In this thesis, a load balancing approach, called RALBANN, developed using graph partitioning and artificial neural networks (ANNs) is de- scribed. The aim of RALBANN is to integrate the successful load balancing deci- sions of graph partitioning algorithms with the efficient decision making mechanism of ANNs. The results showed that using ANNs to make efficient load balancing can be very beneficial. If trained enough, ANNs may load the balance as good as graph partitioning algorithms more efficiently.

Today&rsquo / s reconfigurable devices successfully combine &lsquo / reconfigurable computing machine&rsquo / paradigm and &lsquo / high degree of parallelism&rsquo / and hence reconfigurable computing emerged as a promising alternative for computing-intensive applications. Despite its superior performance and lower power consumption compared to general purpose computing using microprocessors, reconfigurable computing comes with a cost of design complexity. This thesis aims to reduce this complexity by providing a flexible and user friendly development environment to application programmers in the form of a complete reconfigurable computing platform. The proposed computing platform is specially designed for real time embedded applications and supports true multitasking by using available run time partially reconfigurable architectures. For this computing platform, we propose a novel hardware task model aiming to minimize logic resource requirement and the overhead due to the reconfiguration of the device. Based on this task model an optimal 2D surface partitioning strategy for managing the hardware resource is presented. A mesh network-on-chip is designed to be used as the communication environment for the hardware tasks and a runtime mapping technique is employed to lower the communication overhead. As the requirements of embedded systems are known prior to field operation, an oine design flow is proposed for generating the associated bit-stream for the hardware tasks. Finally, an online real time operating system scheduler is given to complete the necessary building blocks of a reconfigurable computing platform suitable for real time computing-intensive embedded applications. In addition to providing a flexible development environment, the proposed computing platform is shown to have better device utilization and reconfiguration time overhead compared to existing studies.

Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans is a Gram negative bacterium found exclusively in the mammalian oral cavity where it resides in the gingival crevice, the space between the tooth and gum tissue. Though it has historically been considered a common commensal organism, it is now appreciated that A. actinomycetemcomitans is an opportunistic pathogen associated with the diseases periodontitis and endocarditis. To cause infection, A. actinomycetemcomitans must interact and compete with neighboring bacteria for space and nutrients, though little is known about the physiology it employs within the gingival crevice. Using A. actinomycetemcomitans grown in a chemically defined medium containing carbon sources found in vivo, I use transcriptome analyses and growth studies to show that A. actinomycetemcomitans preferentially utilizes lactate over the phosphotransferase system (PTS) sugars glucose and fructose. Additionally, the presence of lactate or pyruvate inhibits the transport and metabolism of these sugars in a post-transcriptionally controlled process I have termed PTS substrate exclusion. Since lactate is an energetically inferior carbon source, PTS substrate exclusion appears to be a carbon resource partitioning mechanism that allows A. actinomycetemcomitans to avoid competition for energetically favorable sugars with other species, and I propose a model to describe this phenomenon. To begin to understand the mechanism of PTS substrate exclusion, I examine the first step of the proposed model by purifying and characterizing the L-lactate dehydrogenase (LctD) from A. actinomycetemcomitans. I demonstrate that, unlike other studied lactate dehydrogenases, the LctD from A. actinomycetemcomitans does not exhibit feedback inhibition in the presence of physiologically relevant concentrations of pyruvate, which supports my hypothesis that elevated intracellular pyruvate levels inhibit the PTS. The results of my studies provide insight into a new regulatory mechanism governing carbon utilization in this bacterium. / text

No description available.

This thesis describes results from fundamental studies of liposomes intended for drug delivery and pH or temperature triggered release. In addition, the effect of lipid composition on bilayer disc formation and a potential application of the bilayer discs were investigated. The lower pH encountered by endocytosed liposomes can be utilized to trigger drug release. The mechanisms behind cytosolic drug delivery were investigated using two different kinds of pH-sensitive liposomes. The results indicate that incorporation of non-lamellar forming lipids into the endosome membrane may allow for drug escape into the cytosol. Temperature-sensitive liposomes containing lysolipid (LTSL) release their content almost instantly when heated to temperatures close to the gel to liquid crystalline phase transition temperature (TC). Morphological changes of the liposomes in response to temperature cycling were studied. Temperature cycling induced liposome openings and disintegration of the liposomes into bilayer discs. Incubation of LTSL in the presence of multilamellar liposomes (MLVs) resulted in relocalisation of lysolipid into the MLVs, which affected the rapid release from LTSL. We propose that the presence of micelle-forming components, such as lysolipids and PEG-lipids, facilitates the formation of defects and membrane openings during the initial phase of membrane melting, resulting in the observed rapid release. Similar to added lysolipids, also hydrolysis generated lysolipids induce disc-formation upon heating through TC of the lipid mixture. Two fundamentally different micelles may form in PEG-lipid/lipid mixtures. We found that discoidal structures are preferred over cylindrical micelles when the mixture contains components that reduce the spontaneous curvature, increase the monolayer bending modulus, or reduce PEG-lipid/lipid miscibility. The large discoidal micelles found at low PEG-lipid content are better described as bilayer discs. We evaluated such discs as model membranes in drug partitioning studies, and suggest that they, in some cases, produce more accurate data than liposomes.

To understand the processes affecting the abundance of wild populations is a fundamental goal of ecology and a prerequisite for the management of living resources. Variable abundance, however, makes the investigation of ecological processes challenging. Recruitment, the process whereby new individuals enter a given stage of a ?sh population, is a highly variable entity. I have confronted this issue by developing methodologies speci?cally designed to account for, and ecologically interpret, patterns of variability in recruitment. To provide the necessary context, Chapter 2 begins with a review of the history of recruitment science. I focus on the major achievements as well as present limitations, particularly regarding environmental drivers. Approaches that include explicit environmental information are contrasted with time-varying parameter techniques. In Chapter 3, I ask what patterns of variability in pre-recruit survival can tell us about the strength of density-dependent mortality. I provide methods to investigate the presence of density-dependent mortality where this has previously been hindered by highly variable data. Stochastic density-independent variability is found to be attenuated via density dependence. Sources of recruitment variability are further partitioned in Chapter 4. Using time-varying parameter techniques, signi?cant temporal variation in the annual reproductive rate is found to have occurred in many Atlantic cod populations. Multivariate state space models suggest that populations in close proximity typically have a shared response to environmental change whereas marked differences occur across latitude. Hypotheses that could result in consistent changes in productivity of cod populations are tested in Chapter 5. I focus on a meta-analytical investigation of potential interactions between Atlantic cod and small pelagic species, testing aspects of the cultivation-depensation hypothesis. The ?ndings suggest that predation or competition by herring and mackerel on egg and larval cod could delay recovery of depleted cod populations. Chapter 6 concludes with a critical re?ection on: the suitability of the theories employed, the underlying assumptions of the empirical approaches, and the quality of the data used in my thesis. Application of ecological insights to ?sheries management is critically evaluated. I then propose future work on recruitment processes based on methods presented herein.