This report takes as its subject the Anglo-Saxon text of The Wonders of the East, a medieval liber monstrum which appears in three English manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries. It argues that Wonders is a uniquely English text, and that the use of the vernacular is an attempt to spread and validate English usage across various literary and scientific forms. The first section examines briefly the relationships between the three manuscripts, then turns to one in particular, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B.v., for the remainder of the study. This first section will also detail the contents of each of the three manuscripts, and the various thematic and linguistic connections between them. The second section turns to the text and illustrations of Wonders, and will consider the use and significance of distinctly “English” vocabulary in describing foreign monsters. It will show that the use of vernacular neologisms to describe foreign spaces and monstrous creatures is an attempt to explore the potential uses of English, and was inspired by a political and cultural environment which encouraged the use of the vernacular in an attempt to grow a national identity. The third section examines a brief passage describing the wondrous creatures known as the donestre, and will show examine the anxieties revealed in the naming and renaming of these creatures. It then explores the relationship between the visual representation and textual description of the donestre, and the implications of the discrepancies therein, to our understanding of the text. The fourth section reads The Wonders of the East as a map. First, it unpacks the myriad potential meanings held within the medieval map; then, it examines the structural and thematic concerns of the text, and the ways in which those concerns work to literally map English onto the Eastern world. My final section considers the implications of my reading of Wonders. It shows that this reading, by acknowledging for the first time, the distinct “Englishness” of the text, opens up Wonders to further study from a number of theoretical and disciplinary viewpoint. / text

This textual analysis examines computer simulations as rhetorical objects and acts. In particular, this work examines scientific simulations from organic chemistry and astrophysics in order to expose how rhetorical and social aspects influence the ad hoc decisions (e.g., setting initial parameters, excluding and adding arbitrary elements, and making other choices) that comprise simulations. Prior works in philosophy, critical theory and technical communication underscore fictional and formal features of simulation. In contrast, this dissertation dissects multiple levels of documents surrounding actual simulations—not only drafts of published articles but also software and code interiors, e-mail and letter correspondence, newsletters and white paper reports—in order to discuss the relational (rather than purely formal) meaning of the simulations. This work also compares simulation to other modes of the scientific imagination—paradox, thought experiments and metaphor, in particular. My findings suggest that simulations hinge upon abductive (rather than deductive or inductive) reasoning and qualify as virtual evidence. Also, while published drafts of simulation articles tidy the ad hoc twists and turns necessary for creating simulations, prior drafts and peripheral documents attest to the fact that organizational affiliations, earlier projects, and rhetorical strategies help establish the scope and meaning of simulation projects. Further, meaning-making takes place well before and long after the article drafting process—in prior incarnations of the work for presentation, in correspondence between article writers and reviewers, and in citations in others’ writing. / text

As scientific simulations get increasingly complex, so do the requirements of how to deal with the data that is produced. Few scientists and engineers today are satisfied with just looking at streams of numbers; we require graphical visualizations to better understand their meaning. The traditional method of visualization has been to save the simulation's results to a file, then load that file up in another program (eg. Microsoft Excel) for post-processing. Although post-processing data to produce visualizations may be sufficient for some simple simulations, a modern simulation designer usually wants more out of their visualization. Perhaps they want the visualization to be a 3D plot of an interplanetary trajectory, with the ability to zoom, pan, and rotate the scene interactively. Until now, doing so has required the designer to become adept at computer graphics, which is a feat that almost no scientist or engineer has the time to attempt. The research undertaken here introduces an architecture by which a simulation programmer can easily add interactive 3D visualizations to their simulations. This architecture has several benefits over existing visualization packages, the biggest one being that no knowledge of computer graphics is required to use the it in one's own simulations. Another benefit is that the resulting visualization is interactive by default, without any extra programming required on the part of the simulation designer. This thesis begins by introducing the theory behind how scientific simulations want to visualize data. Common aspects of all simulations are identified, and are used to develop a common "visualization language" that can be used by any simulation designer to specify what they want to visualize. The second part of the thesis specifies a particular implementation of this visualization language, called OpenFrames. Open- Frames is a library of functions that can be called from C, C++, or FORTRAN, and automatically implements the visualization specified by the designer.

Despite the wide-spread acceptance of evolution within the science community, much of the public still holds reservations about evolution as a valid scientific explanation. This is due in part to questions regarding the very nature of a theory, which has been cited by many researchers as an obstacle to accepting evolution. The specific use of semi-structured interviews and research into how students view other nature of science terminology (fact, hypothesis, and law) in relation to theory may provide further insight into how use of the terms can frame attitudes towards evolution. This study qualitatively describes how four college-aged students (science, philosophy, education, and business) interpret basic science terminology and compare scientific explanations in their assessment of evolution. While discussing the terms, students were encouraged to raise other issues that aided them in the construction of their epistemological beliefs about science. The aim was to provide interviewees with the opportunity to speak openly about what they understood regarding nature of science and evolution rather than presuming a shared coherence in the use of the terms. The semi-structured interview format revealed students’ conceptions (or misconceptions) of the nature of science, relative degrees of certainty for the terms, and underlying biases. The results suggest the specific use of interviews can provide a credible and informative account of how students use basic science terminology. A mixed use of the terms can still lead to a favorable disposition towards evolution when students possess a positive attitude towards science, acknowledge the tentative nature of science as a strength rather than a limitation, and practice reflective reasoning. Conclusions made in the study also suggest that an explicit discussion about fact, theory, law, and hypothesis in the science classroom may actually play less of a critical role than previously thought in opening the door to learning content of which many people consider to be controversial. More concentration should be placed on how knowledge is generated and how to reflectively approach a scientific problem. / text

The Hubble Space Telescope has provided the world with incredible imagery of the surrounding universe. The aesthetic quality of this imagery is limited by production resources; by creating a method to harness the highly refined detail and quality of CG elements in live-action films, we can inspire and educate at a much greater level. In this thesis, I create a rendering approach that allows camera movement around and through elements such as nebulae and galaxies, creating a more cinematic experience. The solution will also allow for reasonable scientific accuracy, visual appeal, efficiency, and extendability to other astronomical visualizations. 3D meshes are constructed and textured using telescopic images as reference. Splats are volumetrically generated using a voxelized bounding box around the mesh. Valid splats within a user specified maximum distance receive initial color and alpha values from the texture map. Probability density functions are used to create a density falloff along the edges of the object, and modifications to the RGBA values are made to achieve the desired cloud-like appearance. The data sets are rendered using a C program developed at the Space Telescope Science Institute by Dr. Frank Summers. The methodology is applied to the test cases of a nebula, star-forming region Sharpless 2-106, and a galaxy, Messier 51, or the Whirlpool Galaxy. The results of this thesis demonstrate the visual, scientific, and technical success of this solution. The code developed during this project generates the desired imagery with reasonable efficiency. A short animation moving from outside the galaxy to a close up of the nebula exhibits the flexibility in scale and camera movement. A careful balance between scientific accuracy and visual appeal were maintained through consultation with astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The favorable efficient, flexible, visual, and scientific results presented by this work make this process extendable to most other cases of nebula and galaxy visualizations.

This thesis discusses the impact that paradigms of thought have on the construction of conservation programmes. Western scientific thinking represents a distinct way of looking at the world. It accepts a separation between nature and culture and thinks that knowledge about the world can best be discovered through the use of experiments that follow a specific set of rules, the scientific method. Scientific thinking is an integral part of the world view of scientists and extends to the way in which they interact with the world. Scientific researchers design their projects in accordance with how they view nature. This leads to particular construction of the role of primates. People in the network of a conservation project are involved in this paradigm to varying degrees. The purpose that scientific thinkers put behind conservation can be in direct contradiction with that of the local people. Although all groups involved may agree that conservation is a valuable goal, the ways in which they value nature and want to conserve it can be quite different. Scientists view themselves as experts on nature and how best to conserve it, and they attempt to spread their way of thinking about nature to local populations through education programmes. Not all groups accept the scientific paradigm to the same extent and this has a wider impact on the local community and forms new causes of tension as knowledge and power shift. I studied one particular field station, and explored how scientific thinking affected the outcomes of both scientific research and additional projects. I looked at how basing the conservation around scientific research has changed the dynamics created by a forest reserve. Finally I discussed with local people the ways in which the scientific paradigm had spread to them and how the field station was affecting them.

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Recently, the maximum drawdown (MD) has been proposed as an alternative risk measure ideal for capturing downside risk. Furthermore, the maximum drawdown is associated with a Pain ratio and therefore may be a desirable insurance product. This thesis focuses on the pricing of the discrete maximum drawdown option under jump-diffusion by solving the associated partial integro differential equation (PIDE). To achieve this, a finite difference method is used to solve a set of one-dimensional PIDEs and appropriate observation conditions are applied at a set of observation dates. We handle arbitrary strikes on the option for both the absolute and relative maximum drawdown and then show that a similarity reduction is possible for the absolute maximum drawdown with zero strike, and for the relative maximum drawdown with arbitrary strike. We present numerical tests of validation and convergence for various grid types and interpolation methods. These results are in agreement with previous results for the maximum drawdown and indicate that scaled grids using a tri-linear interpolation achieves the best rate of convergence. A comparison with mutual fund fees is performed to illustrate a possible rationalization for why investors continue to purchase such funds, with high management fees.

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