Scientists are now able to collect ubiquitous data on individual-level movement at increasingly fine spatial and temporal resolutions. Despite this surge in data availability, methods for extracting relevant information about spatial-temporal movement patterns remain limited in scope and sophistication. The objective of this PhD research is to develop novel quantitative approaches for analyzing spatial-temporal patterns in modern movement datasets. A review of the state-of-the-art in quantitative movement analysis identifies the current breadth of available methods, while highlighting key limitations and fragmentation in the literature across multiple disciplines. Existing theory from the geographical literature, namely time geography is applied to a novel application – wildlife movement ecology (termed the PPA home range), in an attempt to expose these ideas to wildlife researchers. The PPA home range method has several advantages over existing methods, most notably its ability to identify omission and commission error in existing home range techniques. Next, an advance to time geography theory is proposed for incorporating object kinetics (i.e., velocity and acceleration) into a probabilistic movement model termed kinetic-based probabilistic time geography. Kinetic-based probabilistic time geography provides a more accurate model for predicting object movement when object kinetics are relevant (e.g., with fast moving vehicles, or athletes). A novel method (termed the DI index) for quantifying dynamic interactions between moving objects is presented, focusing specifically on examining cohesive movement behaviour. The DI index is advantageous over existing dynamic interaction measures in that it is computed at the local level, facilitating a finer treatment of interactive movement behaviour. The DI index is then contrasted with seven alternative measures of dynamic interaction to examine the effectiveness of each at identifying expected and unexpected interactive behaviour, at a range of sampling resolutions, in the context of wildlife movement ecology. The results highlight the value of the DI index, especially as a local level index, capable of identifying variable and infrequent interactions in pairs of moving objects. In summary, this dissertation contributes to the rapidly expanding body of quantitative movement research by providing: 1) a cross-disciplinary methodological review, 2) expanding the application of core time geography theory to wildlife ecology, 3) advancing time geographic theory in development of kinetic-based probabilistic time geography, 4) developing a novel index (the DI index) for measuring inter-object interactions, and 5) examining the effectiveness of available dynamic interaction measures, and their sensitivity across sampling resolutions, in the context of wildlife ecology. / Graduate / 0366 / 0463 / 0329

This thesis explores the interaction between virtual and actual realms in architecture through digital design process and developing environment qualities thereby. The focus will be on the projects that are designed in digital medium to be generated in physical environment. By examining the design attitude of selected four projects in this context, this thesis claims that the two realms of virtual and actual are interdependent. The framework of the study is based on Gilles Deleuze&rsquo / s definitions of &ldquo / actualization of the virtual&rdquo / , and &ldquo / realization of the possible&rdquo / . In this study, besides its connotations of digital technology, the concept of virtual is highlighted with its meaning of &ldquo / potential&rdquo / . The philosophical discourse on virtual and actual proves that the relation between these two realms has a potential to generate new conceptual fields. According to this study, for architecture &ldquo / actualization of the virtual&rdquo / , cultivates the &ldquo / unforeseen relations and new connections&rdquo / in terms of new understandings of space and time. This study introduces the conceptual pairs of form-unform, autoplastic-alloplastic space and linear-nonlinear time to develop discussions on the concerned process. The aim is to explore new space and time considerations both in the design process and in the physical architectural environment generated by this process. The emphasis will be on how responsive and interactive environments speculate the established conceptions of space and time in-between virtual and actual realms. This thesis claims that the architectural projects between virtual and actual are subject to break the traditional understandings of space and time.

This paper addresses the aesthetic encounter from the perspective of the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the visible and the invisible. It begins with the premise that from time to time we encounter situations which precipitate a sense of slippage in our experience of the world. The paper proceeds to argue that the arts can provide a point of access to this experience, and that aesthetic theory has, for example, responded to it through the development of the notion of 'the sublime'. The writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, in particular, aspects of his text The Visible and the invisible, are presented with a view to augmenting this aspect of aesthetic theory. Proceeding from a 'Merleau-Pontian' perspective, the paper explores how the arts can serve to disrupt our conventional sense of space and time - creating ripples in the substance Merleau-Ponty names as 'flesh' - so as to expose the chiasm or blind spot in our experience of the world. The methodology adopted is an experiential one, which draws on the writer's interaction with the selected works of various artists as well as her own practice in glass.

Master of Engineering (Research) / Multiple antenna systems are an appealing candidate for emerging fourth-generation wireless networks due to its potential to exploit space diversity for increasing conveyed throughput without wasting bandwidth and power resources. Particularly, layered space-time architecture (LST) proposed by Foschini, is a technique to achieve a significant fraction of the theoretical capacity with a reasonable implementation complexity. There has been a great deal of challenges in the detection of space-time signal; especially to design a low-complexity detector, which can efficiently remove multi-layer interference and approach the interference free bound. The application of iterative principle to joint detection and decoding has been a promising approach. It has been shown that, the iterative receiver with parallel interference canceller (PIC) has a low linear complexity and near interference free performance. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that the performance of digital communication systems can be considerably improved once the channel state information (CSI) is used to optimize the transmit signal. In this thesis, the problem of the design of a power allocation strategy in LST architecture to simultaneously optimize coding, diversity and weighting gains is addressed. A more practical scenario is also considered by assuming imperfect CSI at the receiver. The effect of channel estimation errors in LST architecture with an iterative PIC receiver is investigated. It is shown that imperfect channel estimation at an LST receiver results in erroneous decision statistics at the very first iteration and this error propagates to the subsequent iterations, which ultimately leads to severe degradation of the overall performance. We design a transmit power allocation policy to take into account the imperfection in the channel estimation process. The transmit power of various layers is optimized through minimization of the average bit error rate (BER) of the LST architecture with a low complexity iterative PIC detector. At the receiver, the PIC detector performs both interference regeneration and cancellation simultaneously for all layers. A convolutional code is used as the constituent code. The iterative decoding principle is applied to pass the a posteriori probability estimates between the detector and decoders. The decoder is based on the maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithms. A closed-form optimal solution for power allocation in terms of the minimum BER is obtained. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes, substantial simulation results are provided.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). "March 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-167). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (MEng (Electronic))-University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2007.

Thesis (M.E.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-108). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). "June 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-166). Also available via the World Wide Web.

A utilização do conceito de tempo como uma categoria de análise em Geografia não é tão rara quanto se imagina, mas tampouco é tão presente e reflexiva quanto se gostaria. Ainda mais raros são os trabalhos de pesquisa que incluem de maneira efetiva a dimensão espaçotemporal na análise geográfica. Esta pesquisa apresenta, portanto, uma discussão em torno de autores que analisam esta perspectiva, na tentativa de construir os conceitos de espaço-tempo, temporalidade (velocidade de transporte de matéria e informação) e identidade espaçotemporal, ao mesmo tempo em que tenta articulá-los ao universo conceitual da Geografia. Adicionalmente, esta pesquisa também tenta demonstrar uma possibilidade de uso efetivo destes conceitos na análise de um recorte espacial específico. O trabalho de campo experimental foi desenvolvido na cidade de Terra de Areia, no Litoral Norte do Rio Grande do Sul, onde diversos fluxos lentos e rápidos convivem proximamente, gerando conflitos temporais manifestados nos hábitos, gestos e sentimentos dos habitantes da localidade. / The use of the concept of time as a category of analysis in Geography is not as rare as we imagine, but neither is as reflexive or common as we would like it to be. Even more rare are the scientific works that include in an effective way the space-time dimension in geographical analysis. This research presents, therefore, a discussion about authors who discuss this perspective, in trying to build the concepts of space-time, temporality (matter and information transport speed) and spatial-temporal identity at the same time that tries to link them to the conceptual universe of Geography. Also, this research tries to demonstrate a possibility of effective use of these concepts in the analysis of a specific portion of space. The experimental field work was developed in the city of Terra de Areia, in the northern coast of Rio Grande do Sul/Brazil, where several flows with different speeds live closely, generating temporal conflicts manifested in habits, gestures and feelings of the inhabitants of the town.