In healthy subjects Deep Inspiration (DI) transiently dilates the airways, while many asthmatics show bronchoconstriction by a mechanism which is incompletely understood.I investigated how the method of assessment affects the response. The response as measured by specific airway conductance (SGaw) appeared to contradict that measured by forced expiration. This led to the formulation of a novel hypothesis to explain the asthmatic bronchoconstrictor response: That the negative intra-thoracic pressure associated with DI may temporarily increase airway oedema and thus reduce lumenal diameter. This was tested by comparing the effects of non-forced with forced inspiration (through resistance). In the asthmatic group, forced inspiration produced significantly more bronchoconstriction. Airway hyperresponsivenessin asthma has been attributed to impaired ability of DI to stretch airway smooth muscle. The seminal study `confirming' this, I argue, is flawed. I have re-tested the hypothesis. The asthmatic response was significantly greater than the control response even when DI was prohibited. Asthmatic hyperresponsivenessis therefore not attributable entirely to an abnormal asthmatic response to DI. Many asthmatics display an apparent capacity for unlimited airway narrowing in response to bronchial challenge; most healthy subjects demonstrate a maximal (limited) response. The maximal response measured by a DI independent index represented a greater % change from baseline than the maximal established by a DI dependent index. This suggested some bronchoprotection resulting from DI but also the existence of a distinct mechanism which ultimately limited narrowing. I reasoned that the capacity for unlimited airway narrowing is most likely a function of smaller airways. I investigated indices of small airway function and found they predicted the ultimate response much earlier in challenge than FEV 1, suggesting a possible practical test of the capacity for unlimited narrowing. I postulate that the clearly established but limited relationship between the responses to DI and bronchial challenge may reflect the dependence of the response to DI on the degree of inflammation within the airway wall whereas the response to challenge may be determined by its overall thickness.

Graduation date: 1979

Graduation date: 1986

This work examines the representations of the Perennial Philosophy in the literature of the Deep Ecology movement, and the negative response of critics to the Self-realisation approach. It then goes on to suggest that a deeper engagement with the nondualistic doctrines Naess embraced could lift environmental philosophy out of the Cartesian framework in which it appears to be bogged down. Deep Ecology has been accused of being politically ineffective, and letting down the environmental movement, because it remains insufficiently engaged with debates concerning power, class, sex, and other hegemonies that occupy the minds of social ecologists, ecofeminists, and cultural studies theorists. I argue that Deep Ecology is not as ineffective as detractors claim, but that it remains philosophically undeveloped, and has not provided sound foundations for environmental ethics. The qualified nondualism I advance, based on Ved??nta, the work of David Bohm, and (to a lesser extent) Platonic thought, treats cosmos, society and the individual as intelligent creative systems in which the interrelated parts are expressions of a vital generative order to which each is actively related. The Self is a mirror of the cosmos, engaged in the process of becoming a more complete reflection of the totality. In all of this the nature of consciousness as vast creative intelligence is paramount, and freedom dominates the entire process from beginning to end. This thesis offers an opportunity to rethink ideas of value, moral considerability, and the nature of the empirical self, from a nondualistic perspective. It proposes that "intrinsic unity" might replace the community as the foundational moral concept for environmental ethics. In the process, emphasis shifts away from the objective sphere and settles firmly on the thinker and thought. Following Bohm and Krishnamurti, I argue that conditioned thought is the only barrier to (inner) freedom and creativity. Most important, the metaphysics of nondualism privileges processes of universal Self-realisation, and reveals the limitations of the empirical self. Understanding thought as a process then becomes something of a moral imperative.

Three species of large crab are found in Western Australian waters, namely the champagne crab Hypothalassia acerba, the crystal crab Chaceon bicolor and the giant crab Pseudocarcinus gigas, all of which are fished commercially in these waters. This thesis reports the results of studies carried out on the biology of the first two species, for which there were previously very little information. The results increase our knowledge of the benthic fauna in deeper waters off the southwestern Australian coast and provide data that can be used by fisheries managers to develop plans for conserving the stocks of H. acerba and C. bicolor. The champagne crab Hypothalassia acerba is found southwards of Kalbarri at ~ 27„aS, 114„aE on the west coast and eastwards to Eucla at ~ 32„aS, 129„aE on the south coast. There is a small commercial trap fishery for H. acerba on both the lower west and south coasts of Western Australia. However, on the west coast, H. acerba is managed as a single species fishery, whereas on the south coast it is a component of a multi-species fishery, which also includes the southern rock lobster Jasus edwardsii and P. gigas. On the west coast, the commercial catches of H. acerba increased sharply from ~ 1,500 kg in 1989 to reach maximum levels of 30-46,000 kg in 1997-99, reflecting a marked increase in fishing effort. However, it subsequently declined to essentially zero after 2000 due to effort shifting towards fishing for C. bicolor. Catches of H. acerba on the south coast peaked at 26-27,000 kg in 1997-98 but, in contrast to those on the west coast, remained relatively high in 2001 to 2003. The crystal crab Chaceon bicolor occurs in water depths of ~ 450 to 1220 m around Australia and New Zealand. However the commercial fishery is almost entirely located between Carnarvon on the north-west coast at ~ 25„aS, 113„aE to approximately Windy Harbor at ~ 35„aS, 116„aE on the south coast. Commercial catches of C. bicolor in southwestern Australia, which came almost entirely from the lower west coast, rose from very low levels in 1997 to ~ 222,000 kg in 2001 and then remained close to this level in 2002 and 2003. These trends largely reflect an increase in fishing effort. Hypothalassia acerba was sampled seasonally by setting traps at depths of 35, 90, 145, 200, 255, 310 and 365 m on the west and south coasts of Western Australia. Catch rates on the west and south coasts peaked sharply at depths of 200 and 145 m, respectively, but at similar temperatures of 16 - 17¢XC. The catches on those coasts contained 69 and 84% males, respectively. The carapace length of H. acerba declined significantly by 4 mm for each 100 m increase in depth. Males attained a greater maximum carapace length than females on both the west coast, i.e. 135 vs 113 mm, and south coast, i.e. 138 vs 120 mm. Furthermore, after adjustment to a common depth of 200 m, the mean carapace length of males was greater than females on both the west coast (96.6 vs 94.6 mm) and south coast (101.5 and 91.4 mm) and the latter difference was significant (p < 0.001). These results thus show that, for H. acerba, (1) the distribution is related to depth and temperature, (2) body size is inversely related to water depth and (3) males grow to a larger size and are more prevalent in catches than females. There was also evidence that the distribution of H. acerba changed slightly with season and that there was spatial partitioning by this species and other large deep water invertebrate predators. The trends exhibited by reproductive variables demonstrate that H. acerba reproduces seasonally on the lower west coast, with ovaries maturing progressively between July and December and oviposition occurring between January and March. The characteristics of H. acerba on the south coast differed in the following ways from those on the lower west coast. (i) No ovigerous females and only two females with egg remnants were caught. (ii) Ovaries did not develop late yolk granule oocytes until females had reached a larger size. (iii) Investment in gonadal development was less. These results strongly suggest that conditions on the south coast are not as conducive for ovarian development and reproduction and indicate that females migrate from the south to lower west coast for spawning. In contrast to H. acerba, C. bicolor reproduces throughout much or all of the year on the lower west coast, presumably reflecting its occupancy of far deeper waters where environmental conditions vary less during the year. Although the mean weights of ovigerous females of H. acerba and C. bicolor were not significantly different (p > 0.05), the mean fecundity of the former species (356,210) was significantly greater (p < 0.001) than that of the latter species (192,070). The relatively high fecundity of H. acerba may reflect adaptations by this species to optimise egg production during its relatively short breeding season. The size at onset of sexual maturity (SOM) of the females of crustacean species, which is often used by fisheries managers for developing management plans for such species, is typically estimated using logistic regression analysis of the proportions of mature females in sequential size classes. The validity of this approach depends on the composition of the samples reflecting accurately that present in the environment. However, catches obtained by traps, a passive fishing method, typically contain disproportionately greater numbers of large crabs, whereas those obtained using active fishing methods, such as seine netting and otter trawling, will presumably represent far better the size composition of the population. Since H. acerba and C. bicolor could be caught in numbers only by using traps, comparisons between the influence of passive and active fishing methods were explored using the extensive data previously collected for Portunus pelagicus employing different sampling methods (de Lestang et al. 2003a,b). These data are analysed in order to demonstrate that the females of P. pelagicus caught by trapping were predominantly mature, whereas those obtained by seining and trawling contained numerous immature as well as mature females. The samples of females collected by trap are, therefore, clearly biased towards mature crabs. Consequently, for any size class, it would be predicted that the proportion of mature females in trap catches will be overestimated, thus shifting the logistic curve fitted to the proportions of mature crabs at each size to the left, and thereby yielding an underestimate of the SOM. This conclusion is substantiated by the fact that the carapace width of female P. pelagicus, at which 50% of individuals reach maturity (SOM50), was estimated to be markedly greater when using the proportion of mature females obtained by seine-netting and otter trawling collectively, i.e. 101.1 mm, than by trapping, i.e. 86.1 mm. From the above data for P. pelagicus, it is considered likely that, through a greater vulnerability of mature females of these species to capture by traps, the respective SOM50s derived for female H. acerba and C. bicolor from trap samples (i.e. carapace lengths of 69.7 and 90.5 mm) will represent considerable underestimates of the true SOM50s. Many workers have assumed that the chelae of male crabs undergo a change in allometry at the pubertal moult and that this could thus be used as the basis for determining the size of those crabs at morphometric maturity. Since initial plots of the logarithms of propodus length and carapace width (CW) of the males of P. pelagicus and carapace length (CL) of the males of H. acerba and C. bicolor revealed no conspicuous change in allometry, the question of whether the chelae of these species undergo such an allometric change was explored statistically. The Akaike and Bayesian Information Criteria were thus used to ascertain whether a linear, quadratic, broken stick or overlapping-lines model best represented the above logarithmic size data. Since the broken stick model provided the best fit for P. pelagicus, the chelae of this species does undergo allometric change. This occurred at 80.0 mm CW, which is ~ 8 mm less than the CW at physiological maturity. In contrast, my analyses provided no evidence that the chelae of either H. acerba or C. bicolor exhibited an inflection and thus morphometric maturity could not be determined for these two species from chela length. Thus, mangers will have to use the SOM50 for physiological maturity, which was estimated to be 68.1 and 94.3 mm CL for H. acerba and C. bicolor, respectively.

Thesis (Ocean Engineer)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 1999. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 22 p. : ill. (some col.) Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 15).

Theses (doctoral)--Universität Bremen, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

In this research, we propose to use deep learning to predict crimes in small neighborhoods (regions) of a city, by using historical crime data collected from the past. The motivation of crime predictions is that if we can predict the number crimes that will occur in a certain week then the city officials and law enforcement can prepare resources and manpower more effectively. Due to inherent connections between geographic regions and crime activities, the crime numbers in different regions (with respect to different time periods) are often correlated. Such correlation brings challenges and opportunities to employ deep learning to learn features from historical data for accurate prediction of the future crime numbers for each neighborhood. To leverage crime correlations between different regions, we convert crime data into a heat map, to show the intensity of crime numbers and the geographical distributions. After that, we design a deep learning framework to learn from such heat map for prediction. In our study, we look at the crime reported in twenty different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Canada over a twenty week period and predict the total crime count that will occur in the future. We will look at the number of crimes per week that have occurred in the span of ten weeks and predict the crime count for the following weeks. The location of where the crimes occur is extracted from a database and plotted onto a heat map. The model we are using to predict the crime count consists of a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) and a LSTM (Long-Short Term Memory) network attached to the CNN. The purpose of the CNN is to train the model spatially and understand where crimes occur in the images. The LSTM is used to train the model temporally and help us understand which week the crimes occur in time. By feeding the model heat map images of crime hot spots into the CNN and LSTM network, we will be able to predict the crime count and the most likely locations of the crimes for future weeks. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (MS)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Domain adaptation on semantic segmentation generally refers to the procedures for narrowing the distribution gap between source and target data, which is vital for developing the automatic vehicle system. It requires a large amount of data with well-labelled ground truth at the pixel level. Labelling this scale of data is extremely costly due to the lot of human effort required. Also, manually labelling often comes with label noises that are harmful to automatic vehicle system development. In this case, solving the above problem utilizes computer-generated data and ground truth for development. However, a notorious problem exists when a system is trained with synthetic data but deployed in a real-world environment, which results from the distribution (domain) difference between these two kinds of data, and domain adaptation helps solve this issue. In the thesis, the limitation of conventional batch normalization layer on adversarial learning based domain adaptation methods is mentioned and discussed. From the view of the limitation, we propose replacing the Sharing Affine Transformation with our proposed Separate Affine Transformation (SEAT) to improve the domain adapting performance. The proposed SEAT is simple, easily implemented, and integrated into existing adversarial learning-based unsupervised domain adaptation methods. Also, to further improve the adaptation quality on lower-level features, we introduce multi-level adaptation by adding the lower-level features to the higher-level ones before feeding them to the discriminator, which is different from others by adding extra discriminators. Finally, a simple training strategy, self-training, is adopted to improve the model performance further. Extensive experiments show that our proposed method is able to get comparable results with other domain adaptation methods with simpler design.