In this thesis, the design rule of the tag antenna and the properties of the high impedance surface structure are studied. We proceed to design the low profile and miniature high impedance surface structure. In order to be more competitive, we use PCB plates for fabrication to reduce the cost. The tags are intended to be placed inside two shorted metallic plates. In order to reduce the effect of the two parallel metallic plates, we use the slots to design the tag antenna. The EBG structure behaves as a high impedance surface and suppresses the surface wave. We add the EBG structure on the back of the antenna to reduce the back metallic effect. We use slot structure to design the non-planar RFID reader antenna that can be placed inside the three metallic plates to read the data. For the slot structure design, the electric field between the slots is perpendicular to the upper and lower metallic plates. According to the image theory, the induced image current will result in constructive effect to reduce the metallic effect. Finally, the hand-held RFID reader may not identify the RFID tag as the RFID tag placed at position deeper inside. The proposed non-planar reader can solve this problem to be used for more applications.

The use of ubiquitous network has made real time tracking of objects, animals and human beings easy through the use of radio frequency identification system (RFID). Localization techniques in RFID rely on accurate estimation of the read range between the reader and the tags. The tags consist of a small chip and a printed antenna which receives from and transmits information to the reader. The range information about the distance between the tag and the reader is obtained from the received signal strength indication (RSSI). Accuracy of the read range using RSSI can be very complicated especially in complicated propagation environment due to the nature and features of the environment. There are different kinds of localisation systems and they are Global Positioning System (GPS) which can be used for accurate outdoor localization; while technologies like artificial vision, ultrasonic signals, infrared and radio frequency signals can be employed for indoor localization. This project focuses on the location estimation in RFID Non Line-of-Sight (NLOS) environment using Real Time Localization System (RTLS) with passive tags, in carrying out passengers and baggage tracking at the airport. Indoor location radio sensing suffers from reflection, refraction and diffractions due to the nature of the environment. This unfavourable phenomenon called multipath leads to delay in the arrival of signal and the strength of signal received by receiving antenna within the propagation channel which in turns affects the RSSI, yielding inaccurate location estimation. RTLS based on time difference of arrival and error compensation technique and extended Kalman filter technique were employed in a NLOS environment to determine the location of tag. The better method for location estimation in a NLOS between the Kalman filtering and extended Kalman filtering is investigated. According to simulation results, the extended Kalman filtering technique is more suitable to be applied to RTLS.

Recent advancements in nanotechnology create a need for a better understanding of the underlying physical processes that lead to the different behavior of nanoscale structures in comparison to bulk materials. The influence of the surrounding environment on the physical and optical properties of nanoscale objects embedded inside them is of particular interest. This research is focused on the optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots which are zero-dimensional nanostructures. There are many investigation techniques for measuring the local parameters and structural characteristics of Quantum Dot structures. They include X-ray diffraction, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Wavelength Dispersive Spectroscopy, etc. However, none of these is suitable for the study of large areas of quantum dots matrices and substrates. The existence of spatial inhomogeneity in the quantum dots allows for a deeper and better understanding of underlying physical processes responsible in part icular for the observed changes in photoluminescence (PL) characteristics. Spectroscopic PL mapping can reveal areas of improved laser performance of InAs/InGaAs quantum dots structures. Establishing physical mechanisms responsible for two different types of spatial PL inhomogeneity in InAs/InGaAs quantum dots structures for laser applications was the first objective of this research. Most of the bio-applications of semiconductor quantum dots utilize their superior optical properties over organic fluorophores. Therefore, optimization of QD labeling performance with biomolecule attachment was another focus of this research. Semiconductor quantum dots suspended in liquids were investigated, especially the influence of surrounding molecules that may be attached or bio-conjugated to the quantum dots for specific use in biological reactions on the photoluminescence spectrum. Provision of underlying physical mechanisms of optical property instability of CdSe/ZnS quantum dots used for biologi cal applications was in the scope of this research. Bioconjugationand functionalization are the fundamental issues for bio-marker tagging application of semiconductor quantum dots. It was discovered that spatially resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy and PL photo-degradation kinetics can confirm the bioconjugation. Development of a methodology that will allow the spectroscopic confirmation of bio-conjugation of quantum dot fluorescent tags and optimization of their performance was the final goal for this research project.

There is growing evidence of carry-over effects in migratory birds. Aerial insectivores are declining across North America; therefore, to determine the cause of these declines, we must have a holistic view of their annual cycle. I use geolocators to map the annual movements of tree swallows breeding in Nova Scotia, Canada, determine if reproduction has carry-over effects on migration, and examine the effects of geolocators. Geolocators revealed that tree swallows began migration in July and had an extended stopover in the northeastern United States. They wintered in Florida or Cuba, returning from spring migration in late April. This study revealed that later breeding swallows began migration later than earlier breeding swallows, but all birds arrived on the wintering grounds around the same time, due to differences in stopover length. No short-term effects of geolocators were found, although the sample size was small, and thus these results must be interpreted cautiously.

The simplicity and flexibility of tagging allows users to collaboratively create large, loosely structured repositories of Web resources. One of its main drawbacks is the need for manual formulation of tags for each posted resource. This task can be eased by a tag recommendation system, the objective of which is to propose a set of tags for a given resource, user pair. Tag recommendation is an interesting and well-defined practical problem. Its main features are constant interaction with users and availability of large amounts of tagged data. Given the opportunities (e.g., rich user feedback) and limitations (e.g., real-time response) of the tag recommendation setting, we defined six requirements for a practically useful tag recommendation system. We present a conceptual design and system architecture of a hybrid tag recommendation system, which meets all these requirements. The system utilizes the strengths of various tag sources (e.g., resource content and user profiles) and the relations between concepts captured in tag co-occurrence graphs mined from collaborative actions of users. The architecture of the proposed system is based on a text indexing engine, which allows the system to deal with large datasets in real time, while constantly adapting its models to newly added posts. The effectiveness and efficiency of the system was evaluated for six datasets representing a broad range of collaborative tagging systems. The experiments confirmed the high quality of results and practical usability of the system. In a comparative study the system outperformed a state-of-the-art algorithm based on tensor factorization for the most representative datasets applicable to both methods. The experiments on the characteristics of tagging data and the performance of the system allowed us to find answers to important research questions adapted from the general area of recommender systems. We confirmed the importance of infrequently used tags in the recommendation process and proposed solutions to overcome the cold start problem in tag recommendation. We demonstrated that a parameter tuning approach makes a hybrid tag recommendation system adaptable to various datasets. We also revealed the importance of the utilization of a feedback loop in the tag recommendation process.

Automated summarization is a difficult task. World-class summarizers can provide only "best guesses" of which sentences encapsulate the important content from within a set of documents. As automated systems continue to improve, users are still not given the means to observe complex relationships between seemingly independent concepts. In this research we used singular value decompositions to organize concepts and determine the best candidate sentences for an automated summary. The results from this straightforward attempt were comparable to world-class summarizers. We then included a clustered tag cloud, using a singular value decomposition to measure term "interestingness" with respect to the set of documents. The combination of best candidate sentences and tag clouds provided a more inclusive summary than a traditionally-developed summarizer alone. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-24 16:31:25.261

This study is a descriptive analysis of the occurrence of the sociolinguistic variables of pronunciation associated with all forms of ‘there’ and Non-Standard There-tag (NST-tag) in Bathurst English. Participants were interviewed and the occurrences of ‘there’ were obtained through the use of sociolinguistic interviews with 15 speakers. The incidences of ‘there’ were sorted based on grammatical category and pronunciation and were subsequently analyzed based on age and gender. The results indicate that older speakers use non-standard pronunciations of ‘there’ more than younger speakers and they also use NST-tag more than younger speakers. Younger speakers mostly use standard pronunciations of ‘there’ and use NST-tag very little. This may indicate age and gender grading or a change in progress in that vernacular is giving way to more standard speech in this community.

This study is a descriptive analysis of the occurrence of the sociolinguistic variables of pronunciation associated with all forms of ‘there’ and Non-Standard There-tag (NST-tag) in Bathurst English. Participants were interviewed and the occurrences of ‘there’ were obtained through the use of sociolinguistic interviews with 15 speakers. The incidences of ‘there’ were sorted based on grammatical category and pronunciation and were subsequently analyzed based on age and gender. The results indicate that older speakers use non-standard pronunciations of ‘there’ more than younger speakers and they also use NST-tag more than younger speakers. Younger speakers mostly use standard pronunciations of ‘there’ and use NST-tag very little. This may indicate age and gender grading or a change in progress in that vernacular is giving way to more standard speech in this community.

In this work, we propose Tags, an e cient mechanism that augments microkernel interprocess messages with lightweight metadata to enable the development of new, systemwide functionality without requiring the modi cation of application source code. Therefore, the technology is well suited for systems with a large legacy code base and for third-party applications such as phone and tablet applications. As examples, we detailed use cases in areas consisting of mandatory security and runtime veri cation of process interactions. In the area of mandatory security, we use tagging to assess the feasibility of implementing a mandatory integrity propagation model in the microkernel. The process interaction veri cation use case shows the utility of tagging to track and verify interaction history among system components. To demonstrate that tagging is technically feasible and practical, we implemented it in a commercial microkernel and executed multiple sets of standard benchmarks on two di erent computing architectures. The results clearly demonstrate that tagging has only negligible overhead and strong potential for many applications.

Passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tag has been shown efficient in item tracking and management in the supply chain. Attracted to low weight and small size of wireless nodes, some research work was conducted to extend the RFID advantage into environmental sensing applications. The concept is to using tag frequencies as sensing parameters. When variation occurs in the surrounding environment, such as temperature and humidity level, the operation frequencies of tags would be shifted, and such shift can be used to identify the degree of variation in the environment. One challenge of RFID tag is the distortion from other surrounding objects, the existence of obstacles and metals can have greatly impact on the sensing performance in both accuracy and sensing range. This thesis work conducts an investigation of the performance of a passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) based system. The investigation systematically probed the effects of passive RFID tag orientation and obstacles (blocking line-of-sight between a reader and a tag) as well as reading period (the time required for successful detection) on the range of detection. In the absence of obstacles, optimized tag orientation improved the system reliability and range of detection. At a reading distance where tag readability became unstable, increasing the reading period led to a higher reliability. A theoretical model was also established and was in good agreement with measurement results, providing a simple guideline to the further experiments. This work would also advance the knowledge understanding on wireless sensing on metal effect, humidity and temperature.