Research on constraints to leisure and recreation participation has focused on various types of activities in which people would like to participate, are currently participating, or have stopped participating. However, little attention has been made to identify constraints associated with art activities participation. The objectives of this study were to 1) identify factors which limit people's attendance to art museums/galleries; 2) address the issue of the internal heterogeneity between two constrained leisure behaviors; 3) reveal the role of previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle in the perception of constraints to art activities; and 4) show the validity of segmentation criteria which are previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle. Data from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA 1997) was used in this study. Total sample was divided into four categories by previous participation and interest in future participation. Further, the categories 'participants with interest' and 'non-participants with interest' were sub-divided based on gender and lifecycle. The results revealed that time, cost, access and availability were considered as the most significant constraints to art activity participation across all segments. However, the array and intensity of constraints differed depending on the types of constrained leisure. In addition, different types of constraints were experienced with different intensity by segments defined by previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle. The analyses demonstrated that previous participation, interest in future participation, gender and lifecycle were important segmentation criteria in constructing homogeneous groups with respect to perceived leisure constraints.

Constraint-induced (CI) therapy is an approach adapted from motor rehabilitation to treat language deficits in individuals with poststroke aphasia. The principles of CI therapy were established from behavioral research with animal models that were later applied to human neurorehabilitation. There is a substantial body of evidence to support CI therapy for the treatment of postroke motor deficits; however, evidence for CI aphasia therapy is less established. This report examines the history and current state of evidence for the use of CI-based therapy to treat adults with poststroke aphasia. / text

This thesis examines three computational problems in sports. The first problem addressed is determining the minimum number of points needed to guarantee qualification for the playoffs and the minimum number of points needed to have a possibility of qualification for the playoffs of the National Hockey League (NHL). The problem is solved using a phased approach that incrementally adds more complicated tie-breaking constraints if a solution is not found. Each of the phases is solved using a combination of network flows, enumeration and constraint programming. The experimental results show that the solver efficiently solves instances at any point of the season. The second problem addressed is determining the complexity, either worst-case theoretical or practical, of manipulation strategies in sports tournaments. The two most common types of competitions, cups and round robins, are considered and it is shown that there exists a number of polynomial time algorithms for finding manipulation strategies in basic cups and round robins as well as variants. A different type of manipulation, seeding manipulation, is examined from a practical perspective. While the theoretical worst-case complexity remains open, this work shows that, at least on random instances, seeding manipulation even with additional restrictions remains practically manipulable. The third problem addressed is determining whether manipulation strategies can be detected if they were executed in a real tournament. For cups and round robins, algorithms are presented which identify whether a coalition is manipulating the tournament with high accuracy. For seeding manipulation, it is determined that even with many different restrictions it is difficult to determine if manipulation has occurred.

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No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is about the computational complexity of several classes of combinatorial optimization problems, all related to the constraint satisfaction problems. A constraint language consists of a domain and a set of relations on the domain. For each such language there is a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). In this problem we are given a set of variables and a collection of constraints, each of which is constraining some variables with a relation in the language. The goal is to determine if domain values can be assigned to the variables in a way that satisfies all constraints. An important question is for which constraint languages the corresponding CSP can be solved in polynomial time. We study this kind of question for optimization problems related to the CSPs. The main focus is on extended minimum cost homomorphism problems. These are optimization versions of CSPs where instances come with an objective function given by a weighted sum of unary cost functions, and where the goal is not only to determine if a solution exists, but to find one of minimum cost. We prove a complete classification of the complexity for these problems on three-element domains. We also obtain a classification for the so-called conservative case. Another class of combinatorial optimization problems are the surjective maximum CSPs. These problems are variants of CSPs where a non-negative weight is attached to each constraint, and the objective is to find a surjective mapping of the variables to values that maximizes the weighted sum of satisfied constraints. The surjectivity requirement causes these problems to behave quite different from for example the minimum cost homomorphism problems, and many powerful techniques are not applicable. We prove a dichotomy for the complexity of the problems in this class on two-element domains. An essential ingredient in the proof is an algorithm that solves a generalized version of the minimum cut problem. This algorithm might be of independent interest. In a final part we study properties of NP-hard optimization problems. This is done with the aid of restricted forms of polynomial-time reductions that for example preserves solvability in sub-exponential time. Two classes of optimization problems similar to those discussed above are considered, and for both we obtain what may be called an easiest NP-hard problem. We also establish some connections to the exponential time hypothesis.

This thesis is an effort to apply Elias’s thinking on social development to the Chinese social situation. At first glance his account of the civilizing process would appear incompatible with this context, in that, after state formation with the Qin and Han dynasties beginning in 221 BC, Chinese civilization remained both stable and highly traditional for well over two millennia. It is argued, however, that closer scrutiny reveals a process that was merely interrupted for a considerable period. The traditional system relied upon a symbiotic relationship between local society and the centre whereby the centre remained relatively small and aloof, not interfering with local social relations, as long as local society provided the required taxes and labour. In this situation the state had the monopolies of both violence and taxation that Elias would look for, but left local society to its own devices primarily because it was already pacified. This self-reinforcing system was enshrined and codified in the Confucian cannon over the course of centuries from the Han dynasty. Central control of the distribution of resources was eventually required to re-start the Chinese civilizing process, for this was the mechanism through which the local social structure would finally be altered. This only happened within the past century as the Chinese people struggled to grapple with their own ‘backwardness’ in the face of incessant Western and Japanese incursions. At this point the old system was toppled and replaced by progressively more aggressive central governments who saw as their most important task the destruction of the traditional social order in the interest of modernization. As the Chinese state consciously and forcibly took control of the distribution of resources at all levels of society, traditional social relations were stretched and warped, and the Chinese civilizing process re-commenced its long-stalled march toward modernization. This has been evidenced both by the dramatic growth in mobility and the rapidly extending chains of interdependence in the form of guanxi connections primarily during the Post-Opening period after 1978.

We develop a framework for finding robust solutions of constraint programs. Our approach is based on the notion of fault tolerance. We formalise this concept within constraint programming, extend it in several dimensions and introduce some algorithms to find robust solutions efficiently. When applying constraint programming to real world problems we often face uncertainty. Whilst reactive methods merely deal with the consequences of an unexpected change, taking a more proactive approach may guarantee a certain level of robustness. We propose to apply the fault tolerance framework, introduced in [Ginsberg 98], to constraint programming: A robust solution is one such that a small perturbation only requires a small response. We identify, define and classify a number of abstract problems related to stability within constraint satisfaction or optimisation. We propose some efficient and effective algorithms for solving these problems. We then extend this framework by allowing the repairs and perturbations themselves to be constrained. Finally, we assess the practicality of this framework on constraint satisfaction and scheduling problems.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). "September 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-143). Also available via the World Wide Web.