Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2009. / Supervisor: Professor Glen Dudbridge. Bibliography: leaves 278-304.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Guo li zheng zhi da xue, 1979. / Cover title. Reproduced from typescript: on double leaves. Includes bibliographical references (p. 481-491).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Guo li zheng zhi da xue, 1989. / Reproduced from typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 355-365).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Guo li zheng zhi da xue, 1979. / Cover title. Reproduced from typescript: on double leaves. Bibliography: p. 481-491.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Tacitus and Sima Qian (ca. 140-85 BC, author of the Shiji, the Records of the Historian) are eminent representatives of Roman and ancient Chinese historiography. The starting-point of the paper is a striking parallel between the two historians: During the reign of autocratic emperors (of the last of the Flavian emperors, Domitian, and of the most powerful of the Han-emperors Wudi) both authors undergo experiences which not only affect them on a personal level, but also influence their historiographie practice. The paper traces this influence with respect to the representations of individual historical characters. On the one hand it analyses the representations of rulers: of Tiberius, adoptive son and successor of Augustus, and of Wendi, natural son and (indirect) successor of Gaodi, the founder of the Han-dynasty; on the other hand it studies the representations of second and third rank characters such as senators, ministers, generals, and - in the case of Sima Qian - also of people from other walks of life. The similarities which can be observed between the two authors point to the existence of certain anthropological constants, whereas the differences are to be attributed to basic differences in Roman and Chinese political thinking and to differing degrees of the intensity of the experiences undergone by each historian.

The great drama of China has been the repeated attempts to bring under single control and preserve the unity of its vast territories, so varied ethnically, socially, and geographically. Han Chinese confidence in the integrity of their own identity has been lastingly unsettled by long periods of fragmentation into regional states, and even in times of political unity the heart-searching has continued: what went wrong? What lessons could be learned for the future? The Southern and Northern Dynasties’ era (317-589 AD) was the longest period of political fragmentation in the imperial era. Its political and social confusion gave rise to differences in later accounts of it. In the eleventh century, scholar-officials intensively debated the issue of imperial rule during this period. At stake was the integrity of the Han Chinese state. On one side were historians who accorded legitimacy to the barbarian dynasties of the north; on the other were those who favoured the southern Han Chinese-ruled dynasties. By the time Song’s power base transferred south in 1127, a strong sense of a Han Chinese identity had developed and pro-Southern opinion predominated. This study approaches the Southern and Northern Dynasties’s era indirectly. It examines it through the most prominent work of eleventh-century historiography, the keystone written history of early imperial China, Sima Guang’s 司馬光 Zi zhi tong jian 資治通鑑 – the main focus of this study. That text has played a central role in shaping later understanding of imperial China’s political traditions and, as a corollary, has contributed to the formation of a Han Chinese self-identity. Yet Sima Guang’s representation of China’s past, though well-researched and written, was inevitably coloured by personal political and social experiences, and by his current commitments – by spin, in fact. This study will argue that at the heart of Sima Guang’s representation of the Southern and Northern Dynasties was a concern for the political survival of the eleventh-century state under which he served. He needed to understand and explicate the political and moral lessons of the earlier period in order to present an imperial vision that would avoid its frailties. This study therefore investigates and demonstrates the previously unexplored extent to which contemporary political concerns informed Sima Guang’s account. By developing a reading of Zi zhi tong jian as an ideological and textual construct, and more than just a simple account of the past, this study affords insights into the composition of historical writing in imperial China, as well as the complexities of the political environment that spawned it. It shows that works of historiography like Zi zhi tong jian served a more nuanced function than later scholarship suggests, and it brings into focus important questions of historical and literary authority.

In this thesis, we present our approach to add dynamism support to simulation environments, which adopts DEVS-based modeling and simulation approach and builds upon previous work on SiMA, a DEVS-based simulation framework developed at TUBITAK UEKAE. Defining and executing simulation models of complex and adaptive systems is often a non-trivial task. One of the requirements of simulation software frameworks for such complex and adaptive systems is that supporting variable structure models, which can change their behavior and structure according to the changing conditions. In the relevant literature there are already proposed solutions to the dynamism support problem. One particular contribution offered in this study over previous approaches is the systematic and automatic framework support for poststructural-change state synchronization among models with related couplings, in a way that benefits from the strongly-typed execution environment SiMA provides. In this study, in addition to introducing theoretical extensions to classic SiMA, performance comparisons of dynamic version with classic version over a sample Wireless Sensor Network simulation is provided and possible effects of dynamism extensions to the performance are discussed.

This dissertation is a history of interpretation and interlinear commentary translation of the "Li Sao," an allegorical poem attributed to the late Warring States (475-221 BCE) poet Qu Yuan. I argue that the significance of the poem is an historically constituted and changing interpretation produced in a sequence of editions, and that insofar as translation is the necessary tool of Sinology, our scholarship and teaching should rest on a translation practice that visibly reflects the particularly Chinese material and reception histories of our texts. I analyze the rhetorical strategies by which specific interpreters, including Sima Qian, Wang Yi, Hong Xingzu, Zhu Xi, and Guo Moruo, "translate" the "Li Sao" through history, constructing personas of Qu Yuan that speak to the politics of their own respective eras. The last chapter is a new translation of the "Li Sao" based on my investigation of the poem's history. It contains multiple English renderings and diverse selections of historical commentary, presented in interlinear form, in order to facilitate historically critical understanding of the "Li Sao" and demonstrate the breadth of interpretation that it is possible to derive from the text. The translation offers not a single interpretation of the poem but rather an image of the historical dialogue that has produced and disputed it in interpretations from the Han dynasty to the present.

It has been demonstrated that certain environmental fluctuations correlate with cetacean strandings in many parts of the world. I examined the correlations between three environmental variables (upwelling coefficient, temperature, and chlorophyll a concentration) and Kogia strandings in Florida from 1998 – 2007. In addition I examined the correlations between El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events and Kogia strandings in Florida and the southeastern United States (SEUS) from 1977-2007. Florida was divided into four regions and strandings were segregated by region with 76% of the strandings occurring on the east coast of Florida. AVHRR Pathfinder satellite temperature data, and MODIS Aqua and SeaWiFS satellite chlorophyll a data were downloaded from NASA websites; NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center upwelling data were downloaded from the ERD Live Access Server, and ENSO data were also downloaded from a NOAA website. Upwelling was examined on a per stranding basis. For each stranding, a square region (16 km x 16 km) of ocean adjacent to the stranding was examined for upwelling index values for the two weeks prior to the stranding (in increments of six hours). Each region was divided into 16 sub-regions (4 km x 4 km). For each increment of time the data were averaged over all 16 sub-regions. A significant change in upwelling index was defined as a change of absolute value greater than or equal to 200 m3/s/100 m of coastline. Of the 174 strandings, 91 (52%) were correlated to at least one significant upwelling event within 14 days prior to stranding. I examined upwelling, temperature, and chlorophyll a concentration on a seasonal basis. The Florida coastline was divided into 16 regions. Each region was examined, for all three variables, out to approximately 32 km from shore. For each region the data were averaged for each month over the entire ten year study and compared to the number of strandings in each region each month. Data covering the regions of Florida were merged into four large regions (the east coast, the Keys, the west coast, and the Panhandle). I found an inverse correlation between chlorophyll concentration and strandings in Florida. In addition I found an inverse correlation between upwelling and strandings on the west coast of Florida. I examined the ENSO record from 1977 to 2007. I found a direct correlation between ENSO events and strandings in Florida (R2 = 0.1626) and the SEUS (R2 = 0.2236).