Vårt intresse för utemiljön uppstod då vi såg, genom erfarenheter av arbete på förskolor, att många förskolegårdar inte alltid tilltalade barnen. Några gårdar såg inte inspirerande ut och barnen visste inte vet vad de skulle göra. Syftet med studien är att skapa kunskap om hur barn utforskar sin förskolegård och vad som styr deras val av hur de placerar sig själva på gården när de leker. Utifrån en etnografisk, induktiv studie, vill vi lyfta fram vad barnen berättar om sin förskolegård. Vi har utgått från barndomsgeografi vilken ses inom forskningen som en del av barndomssociologin. Barndomen ses här som socialt konstruerad och frågor uppkommer om vilka platser som betraktas som bra för barn. Vi har sett utifrån våra samtalspromenader och observationer att barnen använder sig av olika rörelsestrategier såsom att klättra i träden, åka rutschkana och gunga samt att de använder sig av fysiska aktiviteter som till exempel att bygga kojor, samla naturmaterial och hoppar i lövhögar men att de även styrs av sin nyfikenhet och plötsligt kan stanna till för att titta på insekter etc. när de utforskar områden på gården. Resultaten av vår studie visar att rörelse är något som barnen ofta berättar om att de ägnar sig åt på sin förskolegård. / Our interest in the outdoor environment started when we discovered, through the experience of working in preschool, that many preschool centers are not always appealing to the children. Several outdoor environments is not inspiring for the children leading to that they feel lost and don’t know what to do. The purpose of the study is to give a better insight and understanding in how children explore their preschool yard and what determines their choices in how they position themselves in the preschool yard when they are playing. We wanted to highlight childrens experiences regarding their preschool yard based on an ethnographic and inductive study, that is, to analyze and draw conclusions from collected material. We have started from childhood geography which is seen in research as part of the childhood sociology. Childhood is here seen as socially constructed and questions arises about the places that are considered good for children. We have seen from our conversations walks and observations that children use different operating strategies, such as climbing trees, ride the slide and swing, and that the use of physical activities such as building huts, collect natural materials and jumping in leaf piles, but that they also is guided by their curiosity and suddenly can stop to have a look at insects, etc. as they explore areas of the preschool yard. The results of our study show the importance of movement, this is something that children often prioritize in their telling about their preschool yard.

Current Question Answering (QA) systems have been significantly advanced in demonstrating finer abilities to answer simple factoid and list questions. Such questions are easier to process as they require small snippets of texts as the answers. However, there is a category of questions that represents a more complex information need, which cannot be satisfied easily by simply extracting a single entity or a single sentence. For example, the question: “How was Japan affected by the earthquake?” suggests that the inquirer is looking for information in the context of a wider perspective. We call these “complex questions” and focus on the task of answering them with the intention to minimize the existing gaps in the literature. The major limitation of the available search and QA systems is that they lack a way of measuring whether a user is satisfied with the information provided. This was our motivation to propose a reinforcement learning formulation to the complex question answering problem. Next, we presented an integer linear programming formulation where sentence compression models were applied for the query-focused multi-document summarization task in order to investigate if sentence compression improves the overall performance. Both compression and summarization were considered as global optimization problems. We also investigated the impact of syntactic and semantic information in a graph-based random walk method for answering complex questions. Decomposing a complex question into a series of simple questions and then reusing the techniques developed for answering simple questions is an effective means of answering complex questions. We proposed a supervised approach for automatically learning good decompositions of complex questions in this work. A complex question often asks about a topic of user’s interest. Therefore, the problem of complex question decomposition closely relates to the problem of topic to question generation. We addressed this challenge and proposed a topic to question generation approach to enhance the scope of our problem domain. / xi, 192 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Pietro Poggi-Corradini / Caterina M. Scoglio / The modulus of a family of walks quanti es the richness of the family by favoring having many short walks over a few longer ones. In this dissertation, we investigate various families of walks to study new measures for quantifying network properties using modulus. The proposed new measures are compared to other known quantities. Our proposed method is based on walks on a network, and therefore will work in great generality. For instance, the networks we consider can be directed, multi-edged, weighted, and even contain disconnected parts. We study the popular centrality measure known in some circles as information centrality, also known as e ective conductance centrality. After reinterpreting this measure in terms of modulus of families of walks, we introduce a modi cation called shell modulus centrality, that relies on the egocentric structure of the graph. Ego networks are networks formed around egos with a speci c order of neighborhoods. We then propose e cient analytical and approximate methods for computing these measures on both directed and undirected networks. Finally, we describe a simple method inspired by shell modulus centrality, called general degree, which improves simple degree centrality and could prove to be a useful tool for practitioners in the applied sciences. General degree is useful for detecting the best set of nodes for immunization. We also study the structure of loops in networks using the notion of modulus of loop families. We introduce a new measure of network clustering by quantifying the richness of families of (simple) loops. Modulus tries to minimize the expected overlap among loops by spreading the expected link-usage optimally. We propose weighting networks using these expected link-usages to improve classical community detection algorithms. We show that the proposed method enhances the performance of certain algorithms, such as spectral partitioning and modularity maximization heuristics, on standard benchmarks. Computing loop modulus bene ts from e cient algorithms for nding shortest loops, thus we propose a deterministic combinatorial algorithm that nds a shortest cycle in graphs. The proposed algorithm reduces the worst case time complexity of the existing combinatorial algorithms to O(nm) or O(hkin2 log n) while visiting at most m - n + 1 cycles (size of cycle basis). For most empirical networks with average degree in O(n1􀀀 ) our algorithm is subcubic.

Recent years have seen progress in the analysis of the heat kernel for certain reversible random walks in random environments. In particular the work of Barlow(2004) showed that the heat kernel for the random walk on the infinite component of supercritical bond percolation behaves in a Gaussian fashion. This heat kernel control was then used to prove a quenched functional central limit theorem. Following this work several examples have been analysed with anomalous heat kernel behaviour and, in some cases, anomalous scaling limits. We begin by generalizing the first result - looking for sufficient conditions on the geometry of the environment that ensure standard heat kernel upper bounds hold. We prove that these conditions are satisfied with probability one in the case of the random walk on continuum percolation and use the heat kernel bounds to prove an invariance principle. The random walk on dynamic environment is then considered. It is proven that if the environment evolves ergodically and is, in a certain sense, geometrically d-dimensional then standard on diagonal heat kernel bounds hold. Anomalous lower bounds on the heat kernel are also proven - in particular the random conductance model is shown to be "more anomalous" in the dynamic case than the static. Finally, the reflected random walk amongst random conductances is considered. It is shown in one dimension that under the usual scaling, this walk converges to reflected Brownian motion.

Four aspects of the dynamics of continuous-time dynamical systems are studied in this work. The relationship between the Lyapunov exponents of the original system and the Lyapunov exponents of induced Poincare maps is examined. The behavior of these Poincare maps as discriminators of chaos from noise is explored, and the possible Poissonian statistics generated at rarely visited surfaces are studied.

Signaling the moon, packing balls of mud, carving a big sphere, cleaning with a giant unwieldy mop, playing with indigo, wrangling cardboard, setting sunflowers ablaze, playing a tune with a soda bottle, taking a walk with other people’s laundry, kindling smoke signals, weaving a bed, cracking seeds all night, listening to sleep, dressing a plant, these are some of the activities that have been incorporated into my work over the last two years. Most ideas begin in the studio and then are realized outside. Many of the tasks mentioned allow me to easily integrate into a crowd, where the project and I go unnoticed and remain indistinguishable from the buzz of day to day life. Other projects however, have been done with more consideration for its secrecy. The narratives that are incorporated in this thesis, both personal and culled from research, attempt to unpack some of the fleeting yet conceptually interwoven curiosities that have propelled me to search for these experiences.

The paranormal industry in Edinburgh has become a thriving niche within the country's tourist market. While ghost walks have been explored in anthropology from the perspective of spectacle, this thesis investigates and analyses the cultural framework which has furthered the success of the industry. Namely, the ways in which the paranormal industry have appropriated the beliefs and practices of an overarching ghost culture: a community of believers, investigators, mediums, and all those who actively attempt to engage with the paranormal. The increased visibility of the paranormal within popular culture has spurred a wide interest in the unknown and unexplained. Ghost hunting television shows and the prevalence of ghost stories has inspired the desire for unique experiences, and for audiences to contextualise the supernatural within their own lives. The paranormal industry has grown to accommodate this intense, active enthusiasm for all things spectral, and belief has become a commodity. This burgeoning fascination in ghosts has become an important aspect of how Scotland is sold as a destination. While commercial paranormal industries exist in other cities around the world, the historical perception of Scotland as other has created a precedent for the connection between Scottish national identity and the spectral. This thesis further investigates the ways in which the tourist industry continues to solidify the connection between Scottish heritage and the paranormal.

Cette thèse traite l’utilisation des agents mobiles dans le domaine des algo- rithmes distribués en les déplaçant de manière aléatoire dans le réseau. Initialement k agents mobiles ayant les identités uniques sont placés dans le réseau. On décrit un algorithme distribué pour calculer un arbre couvrant dans les réseaux dynamiques en utilisant les agents mobiles. Les agents marquent les noeuds sur les quelles ils arrivent. Ils utilisent deux techniques di?érentes : le clonage dans lequel un agent crée son propre clone pour faire quelques tâches et le marquage sur la tableau de bord (un espace mémoire sur les noeuds). Ces techniques sont utilisés dans les applications comme l’arbre couvrant, le rassemblement et la collecte d’information. Chacun des agents détient une information partielle. Quand deux ou plusieurs agents se rencontrent sur un noeud, ils fusionnent en un seul agent. On s’intéresse alors au temps nécessaire ou tous les k agents fusionnent en un seul et unique agent. On présent une chaîne de Markov pour le comportement des agents, et on montre comment on peut utiliser cette technique pour calculer la bourne supérieur. On étudie le même problème quand les agents mobile commencent la marche aléatoire sous un régime stationnaire. On a aussi étudié le problème de Handshake et on l’a analysé en utilisant les agents mobiles. / This thesis deals with the use of mobile agents in distributed algorithms by performing random walks in the network. k mobile agents having unique identities are placed initially in a network. We describe a distributed algorithm for computing spanning trees in dynamic networks by using mobile agents. The agents mark the nodes on which they arrive. They use two di?erent techniques. In one problem they use the cloning in which an agent creates its own clone to do some task assigned. In the second, the mobile agents mark on the whiteboard (a memory location on the nodes). These techniques are used in applications such as spanning tree, gathering and collecting information. The mobile agents have limited knowledge and hence, they are not intelligent and do not have computational capabilities. When two or more agents meet at a node of the underlying graph, they merge into a single agent. The parameter of interest is the expected time for all the agents to merge into a single agent. We present a Markov chain, modelling the agents behavior, and show how this can be used to upper bound the expected time for all the k agents to merge into a single agent. We study the same problem when the mobile agents start their walk directly under stationary regime. Handshake problem is also studied and analyzed using mobile agents.

This work deals with suggested possibilities of cooperation between regional institutions and Elementary School Miloše Šolleho Kouřim, Kolín District in utilization of educational potential of local cultural heritage. Theoretical part firstly goes in an overview of regional literature about Kouřim and used pedagogical literature. Then follows brief history of settlement in Kouřim from origins through its prime as royal town up to its decline with emphasis on its dominants, which decorate the town until now. First part of the work is closed by chapter Pedagogical outlets, which presents five major topics for creation of historical walks. Practical part of the master's thesis presents three concrete walks, which took place in the autumn of 2010 in cooperation with Elementary School Miloše Šolleho Kouřim, Kolín District and Regional museum of Kolín, respectively with regional office in Kouřim. Corresponding chapters concern preparation, realization and valuation of assessed walks and their potential for further utilization not only for Elementary School Miloše Šolleho Kouřim, Kolín District, but also by other elementary schools from nearby and faraway as well. .

A análise de texturas tem atraído um crescente interesse em visão computacional devido a sua importância na caracterização de imagens. Basicamente, as pesquisas em texturas podem ser divididas em duas categorias: texturas estáticas e texturas dinâmicas. As texturas estáticas são caracterizadas por variações de intensidades que formam um determinado padrão repetido espacialmente na imagem. Por outro lado, as texturas dinâmicas são padrões de texturas presentes em uma sequência de imagens. Embora muitas pesquisas tenham sido realizadas, essa área ainda se encontra aberta a estudos, principalmente em texturas dinâmicas por se tratar de um assunto recente e pouco explorado. Este trabalho tem como objetivo o desenvolvimento de pesquisas que abrangem ambos os tipos de texturas nos âmbitos teórico e prático. Em texturas estáticas, foram propostos dois métodos: (i) baseado em caminhadas determinísticas parcialmente auto-repulsivas e dimensão fractal - (ii) baseado em atividade em redes direcionadas. Em texturas dinâmicas, as caminhadas determinísticas parcialmente auto-repulsivas foram estendidas para sequências de imagens e obtiveram resultados interessantes em reconhecimento e segmentação. Os métodos propostos foram aplicados em problemas da biologia e nanotecnologia, apresentando resultados interessantes para o desenvolvimento de ambas as áreas. / Texture analysis has attracted an increasing interest in computer vision due to its importance in describing images. Basically, research on textures can be divided into two categories: static and dynamic textures. Static textures are characterized by intensity variations which form a pattern repeated in the image spatially. On the other hand, dynamic textures are patterns of textures present in a sequence of images. Although many studies have been carried out, this area is still open to study, especially in dynamic textures since it is a recent and little-explored subject. This study aims to develop research covering both types of textures in theoretical and practical fields. In static textures, two methods were proposed: (i) based on deterministic partially self-avoiding walks and fractal dimension - (ii) based on activity in directed networks. In dynamic textures, deterministic partially self-avoiding walks were extended to sequences of images and obtained interesting results in recognition and segmentation. The proposed methods were applied to problems of biology and nanotechnology, presenting interesting results in the development of both areas.