Focusing on classic Hollywood, I contend that overly narrow concepts of both “sport” and “sport(s) film” have contributed to the scholarly neglect of key texts and characters from this period. Just as a wider analysis of the history of women’s athletic participation has expanded definitions of “sport,” scholars need to consider examples that complicate conventional understandings of sport films. This dissertation focuses on the female athletic performances during the studio era that -- precisely because they deviate from traditional conceptions of sport -- open up space for a range of meanings and identities around issues of gender and sexuality. I look specifically at Olympic skater Sonja Henie’s nine skating musicals with 20th Century-Fox, Esther Williams’s sixteen MGM swimming vehicles, and the 1944 filmic adaptation of Enid Bagnold’s novel National Velvet starring Elizabeth Taylor. This project is in conversation with longstanding debates, particularly in film studies, about the fraught visibility granted to women’s bodies on screen, issues of embodiment and disembodiment, and questions about identification and alienation of real and imagined spectators. The physicality of these studio era protagonists raises issues about the materiality of bodies and embodied subjectivity, even when a corporeal realism that focuses closely on bodily exertion, and the potential consequences of intense physical activity including pain and injury, is denied. This project, then, identifies the specific threats -- as stars and characters – that these women’s active bodies posed and describes how the studios defused and obscured their corporeal and ideological transgressive potential. And yet, in acknowledging and analyzing how and why these studio era female stars are “not there as themselves,” and in foregrounding the consistent disavowal of female strength and athleticism, I suggest that there are critical moments where that power is dramatically and corporeally present, and aesthetically critical.

Poetry clubs composed of gentry women began to emerge during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The earliest female poetry clubs in this period were all kinship-based and organized within gentry families. This phenomenon shows that family was the major source for the foundation of female poetry clubs. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of family on the formation of kinship-based female poetry clubs from a political, social, and cultural perspective and to examine these clubs within the context of geographical location, family learning and marriage relationships. This thesis treats the Mingyuan Poetry Club founded by female members of the Fang family in Tongcheng city, Anhui province as the main focus of research to illustrate the family’s influence on the formation of gentry women poetry clubs by translating and analyzing the members’ poetic works and family life. / Graduate

A trend in computer vision today is to retire older, so-called "classic'' methods in favor of ones based on deep neural networks. This has led to tremendous improvements in many areas, but for some problems deep neural solutions may not yet exist or be of practical application. For this and other reasons, classic methods are still widely used in a variety of applications. This paper explores the possibility of using deep neural networks to improve these older methods instead of replace them. In particular, it addresses the issue of parameter selection in these algorithms by using a neural network to predict effective settings on a per-input basis. Specifically, we look at a straightforward and well-understood algorithm with one primary parameter: interactive graph-cut segmentation. This parameter balances region/boundary influences and heavily influences the resulting segmentation. Many approach tuning this parameter by using an ad hoc or empirically selected static setting, while others pre-analyze images to determine effective settings on a per-image basis. Tuning this parameter for each image, or even for each target selection within an image, is highly sensitive to properties of the image and object, suggesting that a network might be able to recognize these properties and predict settings that would improve performance. We employ a lightweight network with minimal layers to avoid adding significant computational overhead with this pre-analysis step. The network predicts the segmentation performance for each of a set of discretely sampled values for this parameter and selects the one with the highest predicted performance. Results demonstrate that this per-image prediction and tuning performs better than a single empirically selected setting.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the grammatical system of Classical Ch'olti', the language of the Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions, as attested in inscriptions of the Early Classic (approximately AD 200-600). Around 300 Lowland Maya Hieroglyphic inscriptions have been dated to the Early Classic or before, nearly one third of these remain unpublished. Previous work on the monumental inscriptions of the Early Classic (Mathews 1985; Proskouriakoff 1950) has examined Early Classic monuments primarily as works of art. Mora-Marin (2001) examined the language of inscriptions found on early portable texts, a small subset of the corpus here examined. In great part, however, this study of the language of Early Classic inscriptions breaks new ground. The body of the thesis consists of a description of the linguistic system attested in Early Classic texts, with particular emphasis on morphology. The corpus is divided into three general sections according to date: Cycle 8 Texts, including all texts which date prior to the end of the Eighth Baktun in AD 435; Early Ninth Baktun Texts, covering the years between AD 435 and AD 534 (9.0.0.0.0-9.5.0.0.0 in the Maya Long Count), and ‘Terminal Early Classic’ Texts, which includes texts from between AD 534 and AD 633 (9.5.0.0.0-9.10.0.0.0). With these divisions it is possible to track the development of the attested linguistic system of the Early Classic inscriptions. It is discovered that the core elements of that system are already in place by the end of the Baktun 8. The morphological features first attested during the Eighth Baktun continue in use for the duration of the Early Classic, though in both of the subsequent time periods new features are added to the inventory of Early Classic morphemes. The static nature of the language, as suggested by its apparent continuity throughout the centuries which comprise the Early Classic, is consistent with the prestige status proposed for that language by Houston et al. (2000).

The militaristic interpretations of the art of Chichen Itza, Yucatán, Mexico, fails to sufficiently describe its entire decorative program. Absent from discussions of the art tradition is the apparent focus on merchant activity in the city. The influence and power of merchants strengthened during the transition from the Classic to Postclassic in Mesoamerica. With an increase in demand of foreign goods, new exchange relationships developed between centers in Central Mexico, the Gulf, and Maya region. As a result, several cultural regions participated in a vast economic network that created political alliances and syncretic art styles. Focusing on the mural tradition of Chichen Itza, this study proposes a chronological sequence for the wall paintings by examining their style, subject matter, and architectural setting. Analysis of the painted images demonstrates the progressive development of merchant activity in the city and its influence in establishing Chichen Itza as one of the major centers of long-distance trade by the Terminal Classic.

Recent excavations uncovered numerous small rooms constructed on top of the Danta Acropolis at El Mirador, Guatemala. The characteristics of the settlement and the material items indicated that it was a late occupation and lacked the features associated with large Maya polities and Classic Maya culture. This thesis focused on describing the continuities and changes that occurred from the Late Classic to the Terminal Classic at El Mirador based on the ceramic assemblage and architecture. Significant continuity and stability of the pottery making community is reflected in the ceramic assemblage. Additionally, it was desirable to gain an understanding of how the Terminal Classic occupation at El Mirador differed from other Maya cities. The comparisons show that on a general level, despite being a small settlement, El Mirador participated in many of the cultural patterns that characterize the Terminal Classic period. Two levels of ceramic production are postulated for the Late Classic period, one sustaining production of fine wares (polychromes) and the other sustaining production of basic production (utilitarian wares). The people inhabiting El Mirador in the Terminal Classic period were materially less well-off, and did not pursue activities associated with high culture as their counterparts did in larger cities. Nevertheless, they were not culturally isolated and they had access to trade items and small quantities of prestige goods.

Iconography encapsulates the cultural knowledge of a civilization. The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica utilized iconography to express ideological beliefs, as well as political events and histories. An ideology heavily based on the presence of an Otherworld is visible in elaborate Maya iconography. Motifs and themes can be manipulated to convey different meanings based on context. An example of this mutability can be witnessed in the depiction of Otherworld gods. Maya gods were not like Old World pantheons; gods were fluid and could function in multiple roles. Protector gods are an example of the fluidity of Maya deities. Scenes of protector gods are closely related, indicative of a specific theme and meaning. This thesis aims to define a specific iconographic theme, centered around a “protector,” based on the similarities of the composition of each scene in the sample set of images found on monuments. In conjunction with archaeological evidence and epigraphy, I suggest the protector theme depicts deities in the role of a protector

No description available.

A comparative study between the techniques Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth Classic has been performed in cooperation with Saab AB with the purpose to determine which technique is best suited for transmission of data between an Android unit and an embedded system. The parameters that has been analyzed are throughput, energy efficiency and susceptibility. The study has been performed in accordance with the method Design Science Research and has therefore produced an artefact in the form of a system that has been evaluated in an experiment where performance parameters have been measured and analyzed. The results show that BLE is more robust in environments with a high level of noise and can handle lower SNR levels than BR/EDR; 3 dB vs 7,5 dB. If enough transfer speed is reached, BLE would also give the best energy efficiency and if the specified maximum throughput is reached, BLE would, according to this study, have more than double the energy efficiency as BR/EDR. BLE is, according to most measures, preferable from Bluetooth version 5 and is future-proof but BR/EDR still provides the highest throughput.

Classic AUTOSAR provides a standardized architecture and guidelines for automotive development. However, it does not include specifications for securing Ethernet communication. The IEEE 802.1AE standard specifies a security standard called Media Access Control Security (MACsec) to protect Ethernet communication. MACsec protected communication requires key agreement between the network peers. IEEE has also standardized this as MACsec Key Agreement (MKA) protocol specified in the 802.1X-2020 standard. This thesis determines the feasibility of incorporating the MKA protocol and MACsec standard in Classic AUTOSAR. For this purpose, we designed and implemented a proof of concept (PoC), having an evaluation board running Classic AUTOSAR communicating via Ethernet with a virtual machine. Classic AUTOSAR has a layered architecture. The PoC developed in this thesis introduces a services module in its basic software layer, which performs MKA protocol and provides MACsec protection. It interacts with the Ethernet interface in the hardware abstraction layer and with the cryptographic service manager (CSM) in the services layer. Furthermore, this thesis evaluates the results to determine that the PoC meets the security requirements and does not violate the Classic AUTOSAR specifications. Based on the design and implementation of this proof of concept, we conclude that it is feasible to incorporate the MKA protocol and MACsec standard in Classic AUTOSAR. This work also mentions the limitations of the PoC and future work required to achieve the goal of having MKA protocol and MACsec standard as a part of Classic AUTOSAR specification. / Classic AUTOSAR tillhandahåller en standardiserad arkitektur och riktlinjer för fordonsutveckling. Den innehåller dock inga specifikationer för att säkra Ethernet-kommunikation. IEEE 802.1AE-standarden specificerar en säkerhetsstandard som kallas Media Access Control Security (MACsec) för att skydda Ethernet-kommunikation. MACsec-skyddad kommunikation kräver nyckelöverenskommelser mellan nätverkskollegorna. IEEE har också standardiserat detta som MACsec Key Agreement (MKA)-protokoll specificerat i 802.1X-2020-standarden. Denna avhandling bestämmer möjligheten att införliva MKA-protokollet och MACsec-standarden i Classic AUTOSAR. För detta ändamål designade och implementerade vi ett proof of concept (PoC), med ett utvärderingskort som kör Classic AUTOSAR som kommunicerar via Ethernet med en virtuell maskin. Classic AUTOSAR har en skiktad arkitektur. PoC som utvecklats i denna avhandling introducerar en tjänstemodul i sitt grundläggande mjukvarulager, som utför MKA-protokoll och ger MACsec-skydd. Den interagerar med Ethernet-gränssnittet i hårdvaruabstraktionslagret och med den kryptografiska tjänstehanteraren (CSM) i tjänsteskiktet. Dessutom utvärderar denna avhandling resultaten för att fastställa att PoC uppfyller säkerhetskraven och inte bryter mot Classic AUTOSAR-specifikationerna. Baserat på designen och implementeringen av detta proof of concept drar vi slutsatsen att det är möjligt att införliva MKA-protokollet och MACsec-standarden i Classic AUTOSAR. Detta arbete nämner också begränsningarna för PoC och framtida arbete som krävs för att uppnå målet att ha MKA-protokoll och MACsec-standard som en del av Classic AUTOSAR-specifikationen.