The 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran was based and formed upon the concept of Khomeinism, the religious, political, and social ideas of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. While the Iranian revolution was carried out with the slogans of independence, freedom, and Islamic Republic, Khomeini's framework gave it a specific impetus for the unity of people, religious culture, and leadership. Khomeinism was not just an effort, on a religious basis, to alter a national system. It included and was dependent upon the projection of a clash beyond a “national” struggle, including was a clash of ideology with that associated with the United States. Analysing the Iran-US relationship over the past century and Khomeini’s interpretation of it, this thesis attempts to show how the Ayatullah projected "America" versus Iranian national freedom and religious pride. This projection used national interest and the religious and social culture of Iranians to mobilise the masses to overthrow a secular and pro-American political system, replacing it with an Islamic, anti-American system. However, while anti-Americanism was an essential part of Khomeinism, it was a conditional and impermanent concept. As the historical investigation shows, hostility between Iranian and American communities has been exceptional for much of the period since 1850. That recognition, as well as the critique of Khomeinism, offers possibilities for improvement in future relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the West, especially the US.

In response to the fact that academic projects on lay participation in China written in English have been very scarce, and also the views of the three schools of Chinese scholars, this thesis will conduct a thorough review of lay participation in China. Chapter 1 of this thesis firstly outlines the worldwide situation regarding lay participation. Chapter 2 sets out the historical background to the growth of lay participation in China, by recounting the various forms of and experiments with lay participation during China’s history. Chapters 3 and 4 study the status quo of the sole form of lay participation in China today, that is, the mixed tribunal system. Chapter 5 looks into the contribution that lay participation could potentially make to Chinese society. Chapter 6 offers some proposals with regard to the prospective direction for developing lay participation in China, from a realistic perspective. The thesis finds that lay participation has been neither declining worldwide, nor has been absent during China’s history. It also finds that although the mixed tribunal system in China today faces an array of problems, lay participation may potentially contribute to Chinese society in terms of a better justice system and improved democracy. After clarifying the prospects for continuing lay participation in China and proposing possible reformative measures, my thesis concludes that the system, with careful reconstruction, deserves a position in China’s future legal system; and that the leftist proposal, to abolish lay participation in China, should be rejected.

This thesis reports two measurements performed using proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb detector in 2011 and 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 inverse femtobarn and centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV respectively. The first measures the CP asymmetry in Bs-anti-Bs oscillations, called asls. This is measured in inclusive Bs and anti-Bs to Ds mu nu X decays, where the Ds meson is reconstructed in the final state K K pi. The measurement is performed in three regions in the Dalitz phase space of the Ds decay, and corrected for detection and background asymmetries. A value of asls = (0.39 +/- 0.26(stat) +/- 0.20(syst))% is found, which is the world's most precise measurement of a CP asymmetry in B meson mixing and is consistent with the Standard Model prediction. The second measurement determines the production asymmetry of Ds mesons, and probes non-perturbative QCD models. It is performed in bins of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity in the kinematic region 2.5.

This thesis traces the settlement and history of an East Delhi resettlement colony, and the everyday and associational lives of its residents. Settled by the state at the height of the Emergency in 1976, from jhuggies demolished at the centre of the city, Punarvaspur sits within a longer history and politics of planning by the colonial and postcolonial developmental state. As such, Punarvaspur and neighbourhoods like it have long been, and continue to be the site of debates and anxieties about the place of ‘the urban poor' in the city, and of much NGO and political work. As the subjects of large-scale demolitions of housing and livelihood in the course of resettlement, residents' experience of these debates has been far from abstract. Even after 30 years, the aftermath of the resettlement still shapes social relations in the close physical spaces of Punarvaspur. For residents their frequent designation as ‘slum dwellers' makes them the subject of much development work, while by extension also labelling them as ‘illegal' ex-squatters. Drawing on the work of social theorists and geographers, particularly the work of Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey, the main aim of this thesis is to explore the spatial dimensions of the politics of development, through the lived experiences and spatial practices of its residents. By tracing how the socio-historical roots of planners' dominant ‘representations of space' are neither fixed, static, nor uniform, it can be seen how they are modified by the ‘spatial practices' and lived experiences of city dwellers as they are traced out over the fabric of Delhi. For instance, the space of the neighbourhood becomes a medium for the organisation and articulation of social relations in its public spaces. This can been seen in the marking of public spaces by groups through speech, organisational affiliations and concrete devotional shrines. Similarly, residents, NGOs, local politicians and others deploy ideas of morality, respectability, and difference to limit and enhance the agency and ability of themselves and others to act in the public space of the neighbourhood. In this way certain locales are understood as being in need of development as relationships around development are inscribed in space.

The greater visibility of Chinese films brought by the wider global access and circulation has not satisfied the culturally specific understanding of Chinese cinema. The subject/object power relations stemming from the legacy of colonial and postcolonial discourse hinders the arrival of a better-balanced cross-cultural reading. The visibility of cinema provides a visual spectacle, it also challenges the audience with a communication of the epistemic side of visibility which feeds the images meaning and imagination and facilitates a more balanced culturally specific understanding. However, the epistemic side of visibility remains invisible under power-engaged cross-cultural reading. This study suggests that the sentimental provides a possibility for a better-balanced cross-cultural understanding through its provision of empathic connection with the culture, history and the psyche. Home-longing/homecoming is claimed to the basis that the Chinese culture is built upon. Defined as the sentimental, this affective mode has been manifested across Chinese cinema abundantly through visual representation. The various articulations of the sentimental in face of the global and transnational homogeneous force further prove the deep-rootedness of the sentimental. The sentimental fashions as an affective link that establishes an empathic engagement in cross-cultural analysis. Through reading eight Chinese films made since the 1990, this study illustrates the relationship between the visual spectacle and the sentimental in Chinese cinema. Although the eight films are all from mainland Chinese directors, this study is carried out with the awareness of the sharing of Chinese culture within the Chinese language cinema where this study locates.

Knowing the factors that influence older people to volunteer is highly important for the evaluation of the productive potential of the growing population of older people. This diploma thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of volunteering among the elderly. Therefore, this study reviews a psychological, an economic and a sociological approach explaining volunteering and provides an overview about existing empirical findings. Using data from a survey conducted by Statistics Austria in 2006, the study applies the method of logistic regression to estimate the determinants of volunteering by older people in Austria for the first time. Results show that sex, age, level and field of education, employment status, migration background, household´s wealth and income, household size, existence of other volunteers in the same household and place of residence determine volunteering among older people. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the influence of those factors vary substantially for different types of volunteering. / Series: Forschungsberichte des Forschungsinstituts für Altersökonomie

Les systèmes numériques de communications connaissent un essor considérable sous l'impulsion d'une demande de plus en plus pressante de mobilité, de diversité des services et d'intégration des applications multimédia les plus récentes. Les recherches présentées dans ce mémoire de thèse ont pour but l'étude de nouveaux systèmes de communications qui pourront s'appliquer aussi bien aux systèmes de radiocommunications mobiles qu'aux systèmes de communications à l'intérieur des bâtiments. L'élément nouveau est ici la combinaison de deux techniques : l'étalement de spectre permettant la mise en oeuvre d'un accès multiple à répartition de codes (AMRC) et les modulations à porteuses multiples (OFDM). Cette<br />combinaison permet de tirer partie de la robustesse et de l'efficacité spectrale de l'OFDM, et de la capacité d'accès multiple des techniques AMRC. Deux techniques associant l'OFDM et l'AMRC sont plus particulièrement analysées.<br /><br />La première technique, l'AMRC à porteuses multiples est étudiée sur un canal de Rayleigh à trajets multiples. En réception, plusieurs techniques d'égalisation ou de traitement de diversité sont mises en oeuvre et une approche plus globale de la détection est proposée. Elle consiste à intégrer la fonction de désétalement dans le processus d'égalisation, permettant ainsi d'améliorer la fiabilité de la détection. Ces techniques d'égalisation sont insérées et combinées de différentes façons dans des structures d'annulation d'interférences.<br /><br />Si le système AMRC à porteuses multiples est généralement proposé pour des liaisons synchrones ou quasi-synchrones, le système AMRC<br />multipilote peut être utilisé dans un contexte asynchrone. Les performances théoriques de ce système sont développées et comparées aux performances des systèmes AMRC à porteuse unique.

<p>Forest quantification methods have evolved from a simple graphical approach to complex regression models with stochastic structural components. Currently, mixed effects models methodology is receiving attention in the forestry literature. However, the review work (Paper I) indicates a tendency to overlook appropriate covariance structures in the NLME modeling process.</p><p>A nonlinear mixed effects modeling process is demonstrated in Paper II using Cupressus lustanica tree merchantable volume data and compared several models with and without covariance structures. For simplicity and clarity of the nonlinear mixed effects modeling, four phases of modeling were introduced. The nonlinear mixed effects model for C. lustanica tree merchantable volume with the covariance structures for both the random effects and within group errors has shown a significant improvement over the model with simplified covariance matrix. However, this statistical significance has little to explain in the prediction performance of the model.</p><p>In Paper III, using several performance indicator statistics, tree taper models were compared in an effort to propose the best model for the forest management and planning purpose of the C. lustanica plantations. Kozak's (1988) tree taper model was found to be the best for estimating C. lustanica taper profile.</p><p>Based on the Kozak (1988) tree taper model, a Ds optimal experimental design study is carried out in Paper IV. In this study, a Ds-optimal (sub) replication free design is suggested for the Kozak (1988) tree taper model.</p>

Direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) technique is one of the significant multiplexing technologies used in wireless communication services. In the DS-CDMA framework, all users have been assigned distinct signature code sequence to achieve multiple accesses within the same frequency band, and allow signal separating at the receiver. Under multipath fading environment with near-far effect, the current CDMA systems employed the RAKE receiver, to enhance the system performance. It is known that if training data is available the minimum mean squares error (MMSE) multiuser receiver, in which the average power of the receiver output is minimized subject to appropriate constraints, could be obtained by solving directly by the constrained Wiener estimation solution. However, if this is not the case, the blind multiuser receiver is an alternative approach to achieve desired performance closed to the one with the MMSE approach. In this thesis, based on the max/min criterion, the blind multiuser receiver, with linear constraints, is devised. Here constraint equations are written in parametric forms, which depend on the multipath structure of the signal of interest. Constraint parameters are jointly optimized with the parameters of the linear receiver to obtain the optimal parameters. In consequence, the sliding window linearly constrained RLS (SW-LC-RLS) algorithm is employed to implement the optimal blind receiver, with max/min approach. This new proposed scheme can be used to deal with multiple access interference (MAI) suppression for the environments, in which the narrow band interference (NBI) due to other systems is joined suddenly to the DS-CDMA systems, and having serious near-far effect. Under such circumstance, the channel character due to the NBI and near-far effect will become violent time varying, such that the conventional LC-RLS algorithm as well as LC-LMS algorithms could not perform well. Via computer simulation it confirms that our proposed scheme has better capability for MAI suppression in DS-CDMA systems than other existing schemes, and is more robust against the NBI and near-far problems.

The code division multiple access (CDMA) system implemented by the direct-sequence (DS) spread spectrum (SS) technique is one of the most promising multiplexing technologies for wireless communications services. The SS communication adopts a technique of using much wider bandwidth necessary to transmit the information over the channel. In the DS-CDMA system, due to the inherent structure interference, referred to as the multiple access interference (MAI), the system performance might degrade. Next, for DS-CDMA systems over frequency-selective fading channels, the effect of inter symbol interference (ISI) will exist, such that a multiuser RAKE receiver has to be employed to combat the ISI as well as MAI. Since, in practical wireless communication environment, there may have several communication systems operated in the same area at the same time. In this thesis, we consider the environment of DS-CDMA systems, where the asynchronous narrow band interference (NBI) due to other systems is joined suddenly to the CDMA system. In general, when a system works in a stable state with adaptive detectors, a suddenly joined NBI signal will cause the system performance to be crash down. Under such circumstance, the existing conventional adaptive RAKE detectors may not be able to track well for the rapidly sudden changing NBI associated with the problems of ISI and MAI. It is known that the adaptive filtering algorithms, based on the sliding window linear constrained recursive least squares (SW LC-RLS), is very attractive to a violent changing environment. The main concern of this thesis is to propose a novel sliding window constant modulus RLS (SW CM-RLS) algorithm, based on the Min/max criterion, to deal with the NBI for DS-CDMA system over multipath channels. For simplicity and having less system complexity the generalized side-lobe canceller (GSC) structure is employed, and is referred to as the SW CM-GSC-RLS algorithm. The aim of the SW CM-GSC-RLS algorithm is used to alleviate the effect of NBI. It has the advantages of having faster convergence property and tracking ability, and can be applied to the environment in which the NBI is suddenly joined to the system under the effect of channel mismatch to achieve desired performance. At the end of this thesis, we extend the idea of the proposed algorithm to the space-time DS-CDMA RAKE receiver, in which the adaptive beamformer with temporal domain DS-CDMA receiver is employed. Via computer simulation results, we show that our new proposed schemes outperform the conventional CM GSC-RLS algorithm as well as the GSC-RLS algorithm (the so-called LCMV approach), in terms of mean square error of estimating channel impulse response, output signal to interference plus noise ratio and bit-error-rate.