The swift parrot (Lathamus discolor, Psittacidae) is an endangered, austral migrant that inhabits forests and woodlands of south-eastern Australia. With a small population size (2500 birds), broad winter distribution (1 250 000 km2) and often cryptic nature, the swift parrot is a challenging species to study. In autumn they migrate north from their Tasmanian breeding grounds in search of suitable food resources throughout their winter range on mainland Australia. They are therefore dependent on a combination of suitable wintering, migration and breeding habitats. Although they spend a large proportion of their lives within winter habitats, the spatial and temporal dynamics of habitat use in this part of their range is poorly understood. This thesis aims to provide a greater understanding of large-scale winter habitat use by swift parrots, in both historic and current contexts, and provide a basis for future conservation management. ¶ Swift parrots, or red-shouldered paroquets as they were previously known, were among the first Australian birds to be scientifically described and illustrated following European settlement in 1788. However, within 60 years of settlement, habitats throughout the range of the species were being impacted upon. An important aspect of this habitat loss is the speed and spatial extent with which it occurred throughout the parrots’ broad distribution. Although the most extensive habitat loss in some areas occurred during colonial times, habitats continue to be lost as a result of various land management practices. Such impacts are also likely to be exacerbated by the ongoing cumulative impact with rapid climate change. As a result the swift parrot is an endangered species and is the subject of an ongoing national recovery program, to which this thesis contributes. ¶ Conserving habitat for the swift parrot, and other wide-ranging fauna species, is challenging since impacts in one area tend to be dismissed based on the assumption that there is sufficient habitat in other areas. These conservation challenges are discussed in regard to the national swift parrot recovery program. Although recovery program implementation for this species has been successful in identifying and protecting some important habitats, there are still many gaps in our knowledge that need to be addressed through a continuing and adaptive recovery effort, including an understanding of variable habitat use throughout their winter range. ¶ A study of swift parrot winter habitat use was therefore conducted at 53 sites across New South Wales over five years (2001-2005). Swift parrots used a diversity of winter foraging habitats in coastal and/or western slopes regions of New South Wales each year, including several habitats that occur in endangered ecological communities. Landscapes containing winter foraging habitat included scattered trees, remnant vegetation and continuous forests, and swift parrots foraged extensively on lerp and nectar from a diversity of tree species within these. The occurrence of swift parrots at foraging sites was primarily associated with the abundance of lerp, nectar and non-aggressive competitors. Although swift parrot abundance fluctuated significantly between years and regions, over half of all foraging sites were used repeatedly, highlighting their likely importance for conservation. ¶ Patterns of habitat use throughout the species’ winter range were also studied across five states/territories using volunteer data from 4140 surveys. These surveys were conducted by up to 300 volunteers twice a year, for seven years (1998-2004) with swift parrots detected in 19% of surveys. As a result, this study provided the first demonstration of large-scale drought related movements by a migratory population throughout their winter range. It also demonstrated the dynamic spatial and temporal patterns of winter habitat use, including repeated use of sites, by an austral migrant. Four regions in central Victoria were used most consistently, although the birds also visited other regions each year. ¶ During drought swift parrot abundance was significantly correlated with rainfall, whereby most of the population either concentrated in a few regions or migrated longer distances (up to 1000km) to drought refuges in wetter coastal areas. However, swift parrot abundance was not associated with specific climate variables during years of average to high rainfall throughout most of their range. Instead they appeared to prefer habitats within particular regions. Importantly this study emphasises that conservation measures need to be implemented throughout the distribution of migratory species, including drought refuge habitats and areas outside conservation reserves.

Indium phosphide (InP) is an important III-V compound, with a variety of applications, for example, in light emitting diodes (LED), InP based photonic crystals and in semiconductor lasers, heterojunction bipolar transistors in integrated circuit applications and in transistors for microwave and millimeter-wave systems. The optical and electrical properties of this compound can be further tailored by ion implantation or prospectively by swift heavy ion beams. ¶ Thus knowledge of ion-induced disorder in this material is of important fundamental and practical interest. However, the disorder produced during heavy ion irradiation and the subsequent damage accumulation and recovery in InP is far from being completely understood. In terms of the damage accumulation mechanisms, the conclusions drawn in the numerous studies performed have often been in conflict with one another. A factor contributing to the uncertainties associated with these conflicting results is a lack of information and direct observation of the “building blocks” leading to the ultimate damage created at high ion fluences as an amorphous layer. These building blocks formed at lower fluence regimes by single ion impacts can be directly observed as isolated disordered zones and ion tracks for low energy and swift heavy ion irradiation, respectively. ¶ The primary aim of this work has thus been to obtain a better understanding of the disorder in this material through direct observations and investigation of disorder produced by individual heavy ions in both energy regimes (i.e. elastic and inelastic energy deposition regimes) especially with low ion fluence irradiations. In this thesis the heavy ion induced disorder introduced by low energy Au ions (100 keV Au+) and high energy Au (200 MeV Au+16) ion irradiation in InP were investigated using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS/C) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). ¶ The accumulation of damage due to disordered zones and ion tracks is described and discussed for both low energy and swift ion irradiation respectively. ¶ The in-situ TEM annealing of disordered zones created by 100 keV Au+ ion irradiation shows that these zones are sensitive to electron beam irradiation and anneal under electron energies not sufficient to elastically displace lattice atoms, i.e. subthreshold energies for both constituent atoms In and P. ¶ Ion tracks due to swift heavy ion irradiation were observed in this material and the interesting track morphology was described and discussed. The surface nanotopographical changes due to increasing fluence of swift heavy ions were observed by AFM where the onset of large increase in surface roughness for fluences sufficient to cause complete surface amorphization was observed. ¶ In addition to InP, the principle material of this project, a limited amount of TEM observation work has been performed on several other important compounds (apatite and monazite) irradiated by 200 MeV Au+ ions for comparative purposes. Again the observed segmental morphology of ion tracks were shown and possible track formation scenario and structure were discussed and similarities were drawn to the previously observed C60 cluster ion tracks in CaF2 as more knowledge and data base exist about defect dynamics and formation in that material.

In qualitative theory of differential equations, an important role is played by special classes of solutions, like periodic solutions or solutions to some boundary value problems. When a system of ordinary differential equations has equilibria, i.e. constant solutions, whose stability properties are known, it is significant to search for connections between them by trajectories of solutions of the given system. These are called homoclinic or heteroclinic, according to whether they describe a loop based at one single equilibrium or they "start" and "end" at two distinct equilibria. This thesis is devoted to the study of heteroclinic solutions for a specific class of ordinary differential equations related to the Extended Fisher-Kolmogorov equation and the Swift-Hohenberg equation. These are semilinear fourth order bi-stable evolution equations which appear as mathematical models for problems arising in Mechanics, Chemistry and Biology. For such equations, the set of bounded stationary solutions is of great interest. These solve an autonomous fourth order equation. In this thesis, we focus on such equations having a variational structure. In that case, the solutions are critical points of an associated action functional defined in convenient functional spaces. We then look for heteroclinic solutions as minimizers of the action functional. Our main contributions concern existence and multiplicity results of such global and local minimizers in the case where the functional is defined from sign changing Lagrangians. The underlying idea is to impose conditions which imply a lower bound on the action over all admissible functions. We then combine classical arguments of the Calculus of Variations with careful estimates on minimizing sequences to prove the existence of a minimum.

Graham Swifts novel Last Orders has yet to be viewed as containing carnivalesque elements as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World. Through the examination of Bakhtins theory of the carnivalesque and through a corresponding close reading of Last Orders, this article details the carnivalesque nature of the locations visited by the characters in the narrative, of the grotesque incidents that occur in these locations, and of the narrative style and structure of the novel itself.

University of South Florida field investigations in northwest Florida’s Apalachicola Valley have resulted in the relocation of some lost mounds from the Middle Woodland period (ca. A.D. 1 to 650) by trekking through the forest and consulting with avocationals and collectors. This thesis project was triggered by a collector’s donation of some Swift Creek pots and the attempt to relocate the mound from which they came. In the 1970s, Gardner and Nidy recorded this site, named Poplar Springs Mound, categorized as Middle Woodland due to its Swift Creek and Weeden Island pottery. The donated collection contained pottery of the Swift Creek Complicated-Stamped series, Weeden Island series, and a couple of anomalous Mississippian sherds. To see how this mound fit in with other Middle Woodland mounds of the valley, it was necessary to compile data for all of them and relocate as many mounds as possible through additional survey. Artifact types from these mounds, such as pottery, shell, bone, and exotic materials, and burial practices were tabulated and spatial distributions were plotted. The mounds are distributed along the banks of the main navigable waterways of the Apalachicola and Chipola Rivers, on smaller streams and along the Gulf Coast. Nearly all have both Swift Creek and early Weeden Island ceramics, except for three with only Swift Creek types and a single site with only Weeden Island types. The artifact distributions show stone, bone, and shell tools clustering close to the coast and the main waterways. This is also the case for exotic (nonlocal) raw materials and artifacts made from these materials. Copper is distributed mainly along the coast, while other exotics (i.e. mica, galena, hematite) are located along the coast and close to the main rivers. The tabulation of these data, along with the documentation of the Poplar Springs Mound collection, will help archaeologists to see the manifestation of Middle Woodland ceremonial activity in the Apalachicola Valley.

This study revises a dominant narrative of the eighteenth-century, in which a secular modernity emerges in opposition to religious belief. It argues that a major challenge for writers such as Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and for English subjects generally, was to grasp the object world--including the modern technological object--in terms of its spiritual potential. I identify disputes around the liturgy and common prayer as a source of a folk psychology concerning mental habits conditioned by everyday interactions with devotional and cultural objects. Swift and Defoe therefore confront even paradigmatically modern forms (from trade items to scientific techniques) as a spiritual ecology, a network of new possibilities for practical piety and familiar forms of mental-spiritual illness. Texts like A Tale of a tub (1704) and Robinson Crusoe (1719) renew Reformation ideals for the laity by evaluating technologies for governing a nation of souls. Swift and Defoe's Protestantism thus appears as an active guide to understanding emotions and new experience rather than a static body of doctrine. Current historiography neglects the early modern sense that sectarian objects and rituals not only discipline religious subjects, but also provoke ambivalence and anxiety: Swift's Tale diagnoses Catholic knavery and Puritan hypocrisy as neurotic attempts to extract pleasure from immiserating styles of material praxis. Crusoe, addressed to more radical believers in spaces of trade, sees competent spiritual, scientific and commercial practice on the same plane, as techniques for overcoming fetishistic desires. Swift's orthodoxy of enforced moderation and Defoe's oddly worldly piety represent likeminded formulae for psychic reform, and not--as often alleged--conflicts between sincere belief and political or commercial interests. Gulliver's travels (1726) and A Journal of the plague year (1722) also link mind and governance through different visions of Protestant polity. Swift sees alienation from the national church--figured by a Crusoe or Gulliver--as refusal of common sense and problem solving. Defoe points to religious schism, exemplified by dissenters' exclusion from state church statistics, as a moral and medical failure: the city risks creating selfish citizens who also may overlook data needed to combat the plague. / text

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This thesis should serve as a comprehensive site report for both Porter’s Bar (8Fr1) and Green Point (8Fr11) mounds in northwest Florida. These prehistoric burial mounds and their associated village shell midden are determined to have been constructed during two different time periods, Middle Woodland and Early Woodland, respectively. This is the first time that all materials and data have been described and compiled for both sites, despite the fact that they were both originally recorded over a century ago and described differently later by multiple researchers. The mounds served as an important ceremonial center along Apalachicola Bay some 1500 years ago, beginning perhaps during the Early Woodland (1200 B.C. – A.D. 250) and continuing through the Middle Woodland (A.D. 250 – A.D. 650). Evidence indicates an earlier Late Archaic component, and a much later historic nineteenth-century component. People living here probably experienced slightly different coastlines as sea levels fluctuated. The village midden associated with the two mounds extends for nearly 300 meters along the bay shore and has been damaged by sea-level change, while other parts have been borrowed for road material. The mounds have been damaged by looting and residential construction. All known materials and data from the two sites are presented and compared, including burial styles and associated funerary goods. Ceramic types and tempers indicate that Green Point mound was one of the few built during the Early Woodland known in the region. The same population may have constructed Porter’s Bar during Middle Woodland times, perhaps a century or two later, and included artifacts that are rarely found in the research area. Potential areas of further investigation are noted, but time is limited as the midden will probably be inundated within the next fifty years.

This report covers an investigation of the methods and algorithms required to plan and perform semi-autonomous photo missions on Apple iPad devices using data exported from Google Earth. Flight time was to be minimized, taking wind velocity and aircraft performance into account. Google Earth was used both to define what photos to take, and to define the allowable mission area for the aircraft. A benchmark mission was created containing 30 photo operations in a 250 by 500 m area containing several no-fly-areas. The report demonstrates that photos taken in Google Earth can be reproduced in reality with good visual resemblance. High quality paths between all possible photo operation pairs in the benchmark mission could be found in seconds using the Theta* algorithm in a 3D grid representation with six-edge connectivity (Up, Down, North, South, East, West). Smoothing the path in a post-processing step was shown to further increase the quality of the path at a very low computational cost. An optimal route between the operations in the benchmark mission, using the paths found by Theta*, could be found in less than half a minute using a Branch-and-Bound algorithm. It was however also found that prematurely terminating the algorithm after five seconds yielded a route that was close enough to optimal not to warrant running the algorithm to completion.

This report aims to solve a problem for the   waxers in the Swedish National Cross-country Ski Team, which hereafter will   be referred to as the national team. The problem in hand is that currently,   the national team lacks a system for book-keeping of ski pairs and ski tests.   Also, the project intends to provide a tool for predicting the best ski pairs   in given conditions. The report describes cross-country skis and factors that   affect the performance of these skis. Moreover, this report presents the   testing procedure of the national team. The project provides a solution to   the problem in hand by developing a web service based on Django and Django   REST Framework and an iOS application to handle the user interaction. The app   was tested and approved by the waxers of the national team. To predict the   best performing skis in given conditions, the three Machine Learning   algorithms Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree, and Artificial Neural   Network (ANN) is implemented and evaluated. Experimental results indicate   that the ANN algorithm has better accuracy than the Decision Tree, and that   the SVM algorithms and that the SVM was performing slightly worse than the   other two, when applied on test data which is artificially generated based on   the experience of the national team. All three Machine Learning algorithms   perform better in terms of mean accuracy which is significantly higher   compared to the accuracy of a baseline algorithm. The report suggests that   the accuracy of the ANN algorithm is high enough to be useful for the   national team.