Online communities thrive on their members participation and contributions. Continuous encouragement of participation of these members is vital for an online community. Social visualizations are one of the methods to make members explicitly aware of their connections and relationships. There are numerous ways to visually represent information, current-status, power, and acceptance of members in an online community. In this thesis I present a design of a visualization representing the evolving reciprocity of relationships among users based on the comments they give to each others posts. The purpose of the visualization is to emphasize and hopefully trigger a common bond in the community and thereby increase their participation. We developed and deployed the visualization in an online community called WISETales where women in science and engineering share personal stories. We also deployed modified and improved versions of the visualization in two other communities, I-Help class discussion forums and the Vegatopia discussion forum for vegetarians. In this thesis we present the results of the evaluation in these three communities. The results unfortunately, were negative. Even though separate explanations for the lack of motivational effect can be found in each of the experiments, it seems that the chosen motivational approach was too gentle to encourage participation. It seems for reciprocation to take place, the users need to be committed to the community and already have some other underlying motivation to participate actively. The visualization also should provide some new information that they werent aware of previously. This was not the case with the users in the three chosen communities. WISETales was too new and can barely be called a community. I-Help was not a community, but a place for student to post questions for the teacher to answer. Vegatopia, in contrast, is well established, active community, where people know each other, and engage in conversations with each other. The visualization did not provide any new information for them that they didnt know and only served as a brief attraction for a day (novelty effect). We are still optimistic, however, that the visualization may be useful for active and too dynamic communities where people are unaware of their social relationships because they are too many, for example, social network sites like Twitter.

<p>While both intuitive knowledge (<italic>scientia intuitiva</italic>) and reason (<italic>ratio</italic>) are adequate ways of knowing for Spinoza, they are not equal. "The greatest virtue of the mind" and "the greatest human perfection" consist in understanding things by intuitive knowledge, which Spinoza regards as superior to reason. Understanding why on Spinoza's account intuition is superior to reason is crucial for understanding his epistemological and ethical theories. Yet, the nature of this superiority has been the subject of some controversy due to Spinoza's parsimonious treatment of the distinction between reason and intuitive knowledge in the Ethics. In my dissertation, I explore this fundamental but relatively unexplored issue in Spinoza scholarship by investigating the nature of this distinction and its ethical implications. I suggest that these two kinds of adequate knowledge differ not only in terms of their method, but also with respect to their representative content. More specifically, I hold that unlike reason, which is a universal knowledge, intuitive knowledge descends to a level of particularity, including an adequate knowledge of one's own essence as it follows directly from God, which represents a superior form of self-knowledge. Attaining this superior self-knowledge makes intuitive knowledge the culmination of not only understanding but also happiness. Since, for Spinoza, there is an intrinsic relationship between the pursuit of knowledge and how we live our lives, I argue that these two ways of knowing are at the same time two ways of living.</p> / Dissertation

In this thesis, we use the dynamic factor model in state space, proposed by Stock and Watson (1989), to estimate the fluctuations of common factor by using lots of macroeconomic variables. Besides, with the combination of two stage dynamic factor analysis model which is proposed by Aruba et. al (2010), we want to discuss the possibility for the correlation of economic fluctuations across countries to change with different time periods. The thesis verifies the following three conclusions: First, the correlations of the economic fluctuations across countries are significant due to the regional economics. Second, the global or regional common shocks will increase the correlations of the economic fluctuations across countries. Finally, developed countries and emerging countries response differently during the Financial Tsunami from 2008 to 2009.

In recent year, the single-end transmission line is instead by differential transmission line . Differential signaling has been generally used in the high speed digital interconnection on the PCBs. The advantages of the differential signal with a low noise and high common-mode noise suppression, but the differential mode transmission signal is a very high quality requirements of circuit, the two line should have same length and symmetry, but in the practical package the circuit is not this case, In the limit space ,the differential signal should through the bend, it would lead to the phase skew and produce the differential to common mode conversion noise on the signal integrity and electromagnetic interference(EMI) problem. In this paper a new type of bend is proposed that reduces differential -to-common mode conversion noise for high speed digital circuit. This novel structure can reduce the mode conversion over 20dB at DC to 10GHz, and the differential insertion loss remains low. Also time domain the TDT common mode noise from 0.09V to 0.008V as compared with the bended differential transmission line using the edge couple bend. Moreover, the measurement on proposed structure show a close match with the full-wave simulation result. However, this structure does not have a reference plane, the return path is not complete, the current is easy to radiate out, so I design a guard trace to reduce the radiation in this structure.

In this work I investigate the role of emotion in the moral philosophies of Immanuel Kant and T.H. Green. Noting Kant's reputation as a rationalist holding a predominately negative view toward emotions, I studied the works of Kant with this two-fold question in mind: Why did Kant allegedly find emotions as hindrances to moral actions, and what exactly would such a view entail if it were indeed his perspective? Based on Kant's writings regarding duties to others in Doctrine of Virtues, I show that in his discussion on sympathetic actions there appears to be a reliance on emotions in the construction of a moral response to another's fate. I place Kant's theory in juxtaposition with T.H. Green's moral philosophy because Green, a lesser-known British Idealist, is commonly presented as a theorist within the Kantian tradition. However, working exclusively with Green's major work, Prolegomena to Ethics, there are notable differences between Kant and Green. Green does not hold a negative view of emotions as Kant did, and more fundamentally, the distinction between Kant and Green stems from their differing perspectives of human nature. Whereas Kant presented human nature as comprised of two coexisting, and conflicting, natures - the animal nature and the moral nature - Green dissolved this dualism by making reason that which unifies the human being's animal nature and moral nature. Hence, it is my purpose to study Green's moral philosophy against the backdrop of Kant's moral theory, with particular focus on the role of emotions and sympathy in human behavior. In this comparative analysis, I show how Green's theory, although heavily indebted to Kant, works to correct some problematic issues that arise from Kant's denigration of emotions inherent in his dualism. Furthermore, in this discussion that begins as an examination of two views on the relationship between emotions and morality, one is pressed to entertain a deeper question concerning how these thinkers arrived at their views of human nature. This progression is indeed appropriate, at least when considering Kant and Green, because their regard for emotions is directly dependent upon their views of human nature as distinct from animal nature. In the end, it is suggested that Green's theory not only serves to correct Kant's work, but by rectifying Kant's problematic dualistic view of human nature, Green created a philosophy all his own that may more accurately represent the true nature of humankind.

A subsequence is obtained by deleting zero or more symbols from a given sequence. For given two sequences, the longest common subsequence problem is to find a common subsequence whose length is the longest. The constrained longest common subsequence (CLCS) problem is to find a longest common subsequence that contains a specific subsequence. Note a CLCS may be shorter than an LCS. In this thesis, we propose a dynamic programming algorithm for solving the CLCS problem. The time complexity is O(pmn), where m and n are the lengths of the given sequences and p is the length of the constraint sequence. Our algorithm can also be applied to solve the constrained sequence alignment problem, which is a sequence alignment problem with the requirement that some specific symbols must be aligned together.

We propose two kinds of 1.0 Gbps LVDS ( low voltage differential signaling ) transceivers for LCD ( liquid crystal display ) in this thesis. LVDS has become a popular choice for high-speed serial links in large-sized display units. Our designs are an I/O interface circuit for Gbps operation which is fully complied with the IEEE STD 1596.3 (LVDS). A step-down voltage regulator is employed to reject the noise coupled in the system power supply. In the first design of the transmitter, a CMFB (common mode feedback) circuitry is utilized to stabilize the common voltage in a pre-defined range. In the second design of the transmitter, we try to use a DC bias circuitry to stabilize output common mode voltage to further improve the stability of the common mode voltage. By contrast, a regenerative circuit which provides a positive feedback loop gain between the preamplifier and the output buffer in the receiver such that the received bit streams can be correctly restored

The Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) is a member of the rail family that usually inhabits slow moving or still bodies of water and can spread relatively rapidly and colonize a wide range of habitats. This species is a common resident bird, but a study of its basic ecology has not been published in Taiwan. The objective of this study was to examine the Common Moorhen¡¦s general breeding biology, as well as its diurnal activity patterns. I also made an attempt to describe its breeding behavior and time course. The possibility of morphometric characters difference between the male and female of the species was also examined. The study was conducted from December 2003 to May 2005 in Tainan county and Kaosiung Zhouzai wetland park. The majority of Common Moorhen breeding groups recorded during the study were monogamous. Both male and female birds share the tasks such as incubating the eggs, repairing nest and feeding chicks. The incubation period lasted about 21 days. Our study indicates that the clutch sizes of Common Moorhens ranged between 1 and 8 per female with two to five is typical. The primer P2 and P8 sexing method was successful in identifying the sexes of 52 Common Moorhen. The male was a little bigger than the female. There was significant difference in egg length, width and weight among individual females. Only a nest¡¦s inside diameter correlated to (linear regression) the number of eggs. I think that the number of Common Moorhen populations studied in this study can be quite high, which may be due to :(1) they seem to be breed all year long with good parental care and a successful breeding system (2) some individuals may have well concealed nesting areas, and (3) they have few predators in Taiwan, (4) high survival rate of chicks.

The longest common subsequence (LCS) problem is a famous and classical problem in computer science and molecular biology. The common subsequence of multiple sequences shows the identical and similar parts in these sequences. This dissertation pays attention to the approximate algorithms for finding the LCS of $k$ input sequence ($k$-LCS problem), the merged LCS problem, and the mosaic LCS problem. These three problems try to hunt out the identical relationships among the $k$ sequences, the interleaving relationship between a target sequence and a merged sequence of a pair of sequences, and the mosaic relationship between a target sequence and a set of sequences, respectively. Given $k$ input sequences, the $k$-LCS problem is to find the LCS which is common in all sequences. We first propose two $sigma$-approximate algorithms for the $k$-LCS problem with time complexities $O(sigma k n)$ and $O(sigma^{2} k n + sigma^{3} n)$ respectively, where $sigma$ and $n$ are the alphabet size and length of sequences, respectively. Experimental results show that our algorithms for 2-LCS could be a good filter to select the candidate sequences in database searching. Given a target sequence $T$ and a pair of merging sequences $A$ and $B$, the merged LCS problem is to find the LCS of $T$ and the optimally merged sequence by merging $A$ and $B$ alternately. Its goal is to find a merging way for understanding the interleaving relationship of sequences. We first propose an algorithm with $O(n^{3})$ time for solving the problem, where $n$ is the sequence length. We further add the block information of input sequences in the blocked merged LCS problem. To solve the latter problem, we propose an algorithm with time complexity $O(n^{2}m_{b})$, where $m_{b}$ is the number of blocks. Based on the S-table technique, we can design an improved algorithm with $O(n^{2} + nm_{b}^{2})$ time. Additionally, we desire to obtain the relationship between one sequence and a set of sequences. Given a target sequence $T$ and a set $S$ of source sequences, the mosaic LCS problem is to find the LCS of $T$ and a mosaic sequence $C$, composed of repeatable $k$ sequences in $S$. Based on the concept of break points in $T$, a divide and conquer algorithm is proposed with $O(n^2m|S|+ n^3log k)$ time, where $n$ and $m$ are the lengths of $T$ and the maximal length of sequences in $S$, respectively. Again, based on the S-table technique, an improved algorithm with $O(n(m+k)|S|)$ time is proposed by applying an efficient preprocessing.

Differential signaling is suitable for high speed signal transmission due to lower noise induction and higher common-mode noise rejection compared to its single-ended signaling counterpart. However, for a high performance differential transmission-line pair, excellent symmetry and appropriate design for substrate layer stack-up is necessary. Especially for a practical IC package substrate, differential transmission-line pair is inevitable for asymmetry because of considering the locations of IC pads and solderballs. Furthermore, different differential transmission-line pair architectures are also demanded in consideration of limited substrate floorplan space and substrate layer stack-up structures. In this thesis, several differential pairs have been implemented on the conventional 4-layer laminate package substrate. The consequent high frequency performances are measured using vector network analyzer and then compared by converting into mixed-mode S-parameters.