Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Physics, December 2003. / CD-ROM contains entire thesis in PDF format. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005. / Jean Bellissard, Committee Member ; Turgay Uzer, Committee Member ; Roman Grigoriev, Committee Member ; Konstantin Mischaikow, Committee Member ; Predrag Cvitanovic, Committee Chair. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Complex patterns arise in many extended nonlinear nonequilibrium systems in physics, chemistry and biology. Information extraction from these complex patterns is a challenge and has been a main subject of research for many years. We study patterns in Rayleigh-Benard convection (RBC) acquired from our laboratory experiments to develop new characterization techniques for complex spatio-temporal patterns. Computational homology, a new topological characterization technique, is applied to the experimental data to investigate dynamics by quantifying convective patterns in a unique way. The homology analysis is used to detect symmetry breakings between hot and cold flows as a function of thermal driving in experiments, where other conventional techniques, e.g., curvature and wave-number distribution, failed to reveal this asymmetry. Furthermore, quantitative information is acquired from the outputs of homology to identify different spatio-temporal states. We use this information to obtain a reduced dynamical description of spatio-temporal chaos to investigate extensivity and physical boundary effects in RBC. The results from homological analysis are also compared to other dimensionality reduction techniques such as Karhunen-Loeve decomposition and Fourier analysis.

The success or failure of any criminal investigation often depends on the recognition of physical evidence left at a crime scene and the proper analysis of that evidence. Crime scenes that involve bloodshed often contain a wealth of information in the form of blood patterns, the location, and its cause. Any criminal investigation has specific tasks, from the time when the crime is reported to the reconstruction of crime scenes. A lot of work needs to be done. Once the investigation starts at the crime scene, BPA needs to be done at the crime scene and the investigating officer must identify this evidential tool. The investigating officer should not necessarily have specialised training in blood pattern analysis, but rather know when to use these experts at their bloody crime scenes. With the interviews and docket analysis done, the researcher found that this was a problem as the investigating officers, either had no knowledge on the subject of BPA or very little knowledge on this research. The purpose of this study was to determine the use of BPA to CSR, and for the investigating officer to realise that it is not just a bloody crime scene, but also contains a wealth of evidence. The researcher had two research questions. Once the investigating officer follows the objectives of criminal investigation, they should be able to have a strong case against the perpetrators. How could BPA be used in the reconstructing of a crime scene? The researcher wanted to bring it to the investigating officers’ attention that it is not just a bloody crime scene, but rather that it contains a wealth of evidence, which can give them a perspective of the movement of both the victim and perpetrator during the commencement of the crime. Regardless of the lack of knowledge of BPA, it is proposed that investigating officers are to be informed, either through station lectures or by yearly refresher workshops and courses of the evidential tool of BPA. When the bloody crime scene is reconstructed with the use of BPA, an insight of what transpired at the crime scene will help them to finalise their cases. For recommendations, it is proposed that investigating officers are to be trained in more in depth courses in criminal investigation as well as crime scene reconstruction and evidence collection using FSL. / Criminology and Security Science / M.Tech. (Forensic Investigation)