In grid architecture, a grid workflow system is a type of high-level grid middleware which aims to support large-scale sophisticated scientific or business processes in a variety of complex e-science or e-business applications such as climate modelling, disaster recovery, medical surgery, high energy physics, international stock market modelling and so on. Such sophisticated processes often contain hundreds of thousands of computation or data intensive activities and take a long time to complete. In reality, they are normally time constrained. Correspondingly, temporal constraints are enforced when they are modelled or redesigned as grid workflow specifications at build-time. The main types of temporal constraints include upper bound, lower bound and fixed-time. Then, temporal verification would be conducted so that we can identify any temporal violations and handle them in time. Conventional temporal verification research and practice have presented some basic concepts and approaches. However, they have not paid sufficient attention to overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. In the context of grid economy, any resources for executing grid workflows must be paid. Therefore, more resources should be mainly used for execution of grid workflow itself rather than for temporal verification. Poor temporal verification effectiveness or efficiency would cause more resources diverted to temporal verification. Hence, temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency become a prominent issue and deserve an in-depth investigation. This thesis systematically investigates the limitations of conventional temporal verification in terms of temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. The detailed analysis of temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency is conducted for each step of a temporal verification cycle. There are four steps in total: Step 1 - defining temporal consistency; Step 2 - assigning temporal constraints; Step 3 - selecting appropriate checkpoints; and Step 4 - verifying temporal constraints. Based on the investigation and analysis, we propose some new concepts and develop a set of innovative methods and algorithms towards more effective and efficient temporal verification. Comparisons, quantitative evaluations and/or mathematical proofs are also presented at each step of the temporal verification cycle. These demonstrate that our new concepts, innovative methods and algorithms can significantly improve overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. Specifically, in Step 1, we analyse the limitations of two temporal consistency states which are defined by conventional verification work. After, we propose four new states towards better temporal verification effectiveness. In Step 2, we analyse the necessity of a number of temporal constraints in terms of temporal verification effectiveness. Then we design a novel algorithm for assigning a series of finegrained temporal constraints within a few user-set coarse-grained ones. In Step 3, we discuss the problem of existing representative checkpoint selection strategies in terms of temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. The problem is that they often ignore some necessary checkpoints and/or select some unnecessary ones. To solve this problem, we develop an innovative strategy and corresponding algorithms which only select sufficient and necessary checkpoints. In Step 4, we investigate a phenomenon which is ignored by existing temporal verification work, i.e. temporal dependency. Temporal dependency means temporal constraints are often dependent on each other in terms of their verification. We analyse its impact on overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. Based on this, we develop some novel temporal verification algorithms which can significantly improve overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. Finally, we present an extension to our research about handling temporal verification results since these verification results are based on our four new temporal consistency states. The major contributions of this research are that we have provided a set of new concepts, innovative methods and algorithms for temporal verification in grid workflow systems. With these, we can significantly improve overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. This would eventually improve the overall performance and usability of grid workflow systems because temporal verification can be viewed as a service or function of grid workflow systems. Consequently, by deploying the new concepts, innovative methods and algorithms, grid workflow systems would be able to better support large-scale sophisticated scientific and business processes in complex e-science and e-business applications in the context of grid economy.

Owing to the advances of computer and communication technologies, clustering analysis on moving objects has attracted increasing attention in recent years. An interesting problem is to find the moving clusters composed of objects which move along for a sufficiently long period of time. However, a moving cluster inclines to break after some time because of the goal change in each individual object. In order to identify the set of moving clusters, we propose the formal definition of moving clusters with semantically clear parameters. Based on the definition, we propose delicate approaches to cluster moving objects. The proposed approaches are evaluated using data generated with and without underlying model. We validate our approaches with a through experimental evaluation and comparison.

People typically underestimate the time it will take them to complete tasks, even when they are familiar with the process of executing those tasks (the “planning fallacy”; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Buehler, Griffin & Ross, 1994). One reason that individuals may show a chronic misprediction of task completion time hinges on an incomplete conception of the steps required for task completion. Support Theory (Tversky & Koehler, 1994) suggests that “unpacking” such steps may help to attenuate the planning fallacy. Indeed, when a task is unpacked into procedural steps, people give longer task completion time estimates, and the planning fallacy is minimized (Kruger & Evans, 2004). Construal level theory (Liberman & Trope, 1998) suggests that a lower-level construal of a task (i.e., a task construed in the near-future) may also foster less optimistic predictions, akin to the underlying mechanism of unpacking a task. It is hypothesized that the effects of unpacking on task completion time will be more pronounced for near-future tasks, because the lower-level construal of such tasks emphasizes details of component steps, making them more readily available to be “unpacked” as part of the prediction process. Conversely, for distant-future events, unpacking effects should be attenuated. Further, these distance-dependent unpacking effects should depend critically on the content of steps unpacked. These hypotheses were tested in five studies. Unpacking effects on completion time estimates are attenuated for distant- relative to near-future tasks, and that this attenuation emerges as a result of an abstract conception of the steps of the task when considered in the distant future.

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In this paper I argue that the presentist cannot deal adequately with cross-temporal relations. I look at several attempts to solve the cross-temporal relations objection and find only one that might work. Still I argue that even it can't deal with cross-temporal spatial relations such as continuity. I defend Sider here against two plausible responses. The first is that instantaneous velocities can be employed on the presentist's behalf to get them out of trouble. I argue that this response won't work. The second is a response by Dean Zimmerman in which the presentist accepts that past space-time points exist at present. I argue that his response does indeed provide us with a solution but that the cost of that solution is far too high. / text

published_or_final_version / Computer Science / Master / Master of Philosophy

Temporal monoreferentials in French (hier, aujourd'hui, demain, the names of the days and the names of the months), although used frequently, were never the subject of a comprehensive study before Curat (1999), resulting in imprecision and inconsistency in their classification. Defining their status is thus at the centre of this study, which shows that hier, aujourd'hui, demain and the names of the days are substantives, but unlike other substantives, they can, in themselves, refer to a «sole individual* and play the role of noun phrases without a determiner. Their usage without a determiner depends on their link to the nexus ego-hic-nunc (they are defined by the time of their enunciation) and the unicity of their referent. They do, however, require the presence of a determiner once detached from that nexus or when they refer to several referents (real or not). A more or less strong lexical predisposition for «nynegocentric» (i.e speaker referential) deicticity allows their lexeme to have a special link with the nexus ego-hic-nunc, and the nexus thus imposes the monoreferential constraint - hence the use without a determiner. In first place on the scale of nynegocentric deicticity are the terms which make up the enunciative framework (je, tu, ici, etc.). Hier, aujourd'hui and demain are placed second: they but rarely accept the presence of a determiner. Next are the names of the days, which may be used with or without a determiner, followed by the other substantives which require the presence of a determiner for reference purposes. One can thus conclude that hier, aujourd'hui, demain and the names of the days make up a subcategory of common nouns. The operation of the names of the months differs from that of the names of the days in terms of both syntax and reference (they seldom vary in number, refer to one individual, and function without a determiner most of the time, independently of any link with the nexus ego-hic-nunc); it more closely reflects that of proper nouns. They form a subcategory of proper nouns. The approach used, based primarily on the work of Kleiber and Curat, was grammatical, semantic and deictic.

Temporal lobe epileptics often experience interictal (i.e., between-seizure) emotional disturbances such as fear and anxiety. Despite the problem that these disturbances present, little progress has been made in characterizing their nature and etiology because they are not amenable to experimental analysis in clinical populations. Accordingly, the general purpose of the experiments in this thesis was to demonstrate the potential of long-term amygdala kindling in rats as a model of the interictal hyperemotionality of temporal lobe epileptics. Seven experiments comprise this thesis. Experiments 1 and 2 established that longterm amygdala kindling (i.e., 100 stimulations) results in large and reliable increases in emotionality. In Experiment 1, the long-term amygdala-kindled rats displayed more resistance to capture from an open field and more open-arm activity on an elevated plus maze than did the sham-stimulated rats; in Experiment 2, the magnitude of this hyperemotionality was shown to be dependent on the number of amygdala stimulations that the rats received. Experiment 3 showed that kindling-induced hyperemotionality is enduring; the hyperemotionality present 1 day after the final stimulation did not decline significantly over the ensuing month although some amelioration of symptoms was observed. Experiment 4 established that kindling-induced hyperemotionality is not unique to amygdala stimulation. Although increases in emotionality were greatest in amygdalakindled rats, hippocampal-kindled, but not caudate-kindled, rats also displayed significant increases. Experiments 5 and 6 showed that kindling-induced hyperemotionality is fundamentally defensive in nature. In Experiment 5, amygdala-kindled rats displayed high levels of emotionality in an unfamiliar, but not in a familiar, situation; in Experiment 6, amygdala-kindled rats displayed more defensive, but less aggressive behaviour, in their interactions with other rats. Finally, Experiment 7 showed that 8-OH-DPAT binding to serotonin 5HT1A receptors is increased in the dentate gyrus of amygdala-kindled rats, but not in the amygdala, periaqueductal grey, perirhinal cortex, or CA1 or CA3 hippocampal subfields. Together, the results of these experiments establish the potential of long-term amygdala kindling as a useful animal model of interictal emotionality in temporal lobe epileptics.

This thesis investigated melodic memory and perception in patients with unilateral left (LT) or right (RT) temporal-lobe lesions and in normal control (NC) subjects. Experiment I examined learning and 24-hour retention of unfamiliar tunes and nonsense words. Both temporal-lobe groups were impaired in learning the tunes and the words. Long-term retention of these stimuli showed that subjects with a RT lobectomy were more impaired in recognizing the tunes than the words, while subjects with a LT lobectomy were more impaired in recognizing the words than the tunes. This study demonstrated the differenting roles of the right and the left temporal lobes in long-term retention of musical and verbal information, respectively. Experiment IIa and IIb investigated memory for songs (words sung to a tune). Recognition of the melodic component resulted in a deficit for both RT and LT groups, but the nature of the impairment seems to be related to the side of the lesion. Patients with LT lobectomy showed deficits in tune recognition mediated by words, but not for tunes sung without words. Patients with RT lobectomy were impaired in tune recognition, whether or not words were sung to the tunes. On the other hand, the well-known verbal memory deficit was shown after a LT lobectomy when the words actually form part of the stimulus as well as when the words are spoken. In experiment III two melodic discrimination tasks were created to test the hypothesis that the RT and the LT lobes are specialized for global and local information processing, respectively. The results showed that impairments under both experimental conditions regardless of the side of the temporal lobectomy suggest that the two temporal lobes are involved in the processing of contour and interval information.

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