Global ETD Search

81	My Body In Visual Culture Ritter, Amy B. 25 September 2014 (has links) No description available. Fine Arts Womens Studies Body women bodies visual culture feminism xerox print cardboard cutout sculpture androgyny photography historical reference concrete cinderblock Photoshopping erasure effacing sex gender Identity Glass pants blow Installation Art
82	Fetischism, läggning och lag : En kvantitativ analys av en sexuell minoritets relation till lagstadgad läggning / Fetishism, sexual orientation and law : A quantitative analysis of a sexual minority's relation to legally established sexuality Nilsson-Jatko, David January 2020 (has links) Fetischister är en sexuell minoritet vars sexualitet karaktäriseras av en inriktning mot någon sak, något annat än kön. Svensk lagstiftning kommunicerar en normerande bild av att endast sexualiteter riktade mot kön kan vara grundläggande och utgöra en persons sexuella läggning, övriga tillskrivs att vara sexuella beteenden med svaga konstitutiva kopplingar. I detta projekt undersöks något som inte undersökts kvantitativt tidigare; huruvida fetischisters egna upplevelser stämmer med lagstiftningens antaganden om gruppen. Eftersom lagstiftning är värderings- och tankenormerande och ytterst reglerar hur vi organiserar samhället är det högst angeläget att ta reda på hur det förhåller sig. Fetischisters upplevelser har fångats i en kvantitativ undersökning med 2028 respondenter. Resultaten av undersökningen har jämförts med fyra antaganden om fetischister som lagstiftningens förarbeten utgår från. Analysen pekar mot att: Fetischism kan vara såväl sexuellt som ickesexuellt och något som kan röra tankar, känslor och beteenden på ett konsistent sätt över tid. Att som lagstiftningen porträttera fetischism som ett strikt sexuellt beteende som ställs i kontrast till något personlighetsanstruket framstår därmed som otillräckligt. Denna undersökning synliggör att det finns en fetischistisk orientering, en fetischistisk sexuell preferens. Förarbetenas utgångspunkt att enbart könsinriktade sexualiteter har att göra med sexuell preferens är därmed en förenkling som framstår som felaktig. Undersökningen har visat att fetischism kan vara något grundläggande, stabilt, ej frivilligt valt och uppkommet i tidig ålder. Därmed stämmer inte förarbetenas antagande att dessa egenskaper är unika för sexualiteter riktade mot kön. Fetischistisk sexualitet har potential att vara en individs sexuella läggning då sexualiteten kan genomsyra sexuell praktik, identitet och preferens på ovan nämnda sätt. Därmed stämmer inte lagstiftningens bild av att enbart sexualiteter riktade mot kön kan vara sexuella läggningar. Den sammantagna analysen visar att fetischisters upplevelser inte stämmer med de antaganden om gruppen som lagstiftningen baseras på. Fetischism kan ligga till grund för flera olika situationer; både något som för en person kan utgöra ett svagare sexuellt intresse likväl som något som för en annan person kan vara grundläggande, såsom dennes sexuella läggning. Lagstiftningen återspeglar inte detta. / Fetishism refers to sexuality focused on a specific thing; an object, a body part or, in some cases, a more abstract phenomenon. Swedish law states that only sexualities focused on sex/gender can be considered fundamental to a person – in Sweden referred to as a person’s ”sexual disposition” or ”läggning”; roughly equivalent to ”primary sexual orientation”. Sexualities focused on anything other than sex/gender are considered sexual behaviours with weak constitutive connections. This research project examines quantitatively how the self-percieved experiences of fetishists compares to the assumptions about the group made in Swedish law texts. Data focused on the experiences of 2028 fetishists has been collected through an Internet survey 2019 – 2020, specifically targeting persons with a fetishistic sexuality in a sexological sense. The respondents identified as 74.7% men, 19.3% women and 6.0% other gender, with an average age of 41.4 years. The results from the survey indicates: Fetishism can have sexual as well as non-sexual aspects. Fetishism can influence thoughts, emotions and behaviours in an individual consistently over a very long period of time. The law’s depiction of fetishism as a strictly sexual behaviour that is discursively portrayed in contrast to personality appears to be inadequate. The results highlights a fetishistic sexual preference. The law’s assumption that only sex/gender focused sexualities can be relevant for a persons sexual preference or orientation consequently appears to be misleading. The results shows that fetishism can be constitutive to a persons sexuality: It can be a profound and enduring sexual pattern, not voluntarily chosen and emerging in early age. Consequently, the law’s assumptions that those properties are unique for sex/gender focused sexualities appears to be inaccurate. Fetishism has the potential to be an individual’s sexual disposition (primary sexual orientation), as it can characterize an individual’s sexual practice, identity and preference in a constitutive way. Consequently, the law’s definition of sexual disposition (primary sexual orientation) as only being relevant to sexualities focused on sex/gender appears to be false. The research indicates that the Swedish law’s assumption about fetishism does not correspond with the self-perception of fetishists themselves. The result suggests that fetishism is a heterogenous sexuality, which for some fetishists can consist of a less constitutive sexual interest, while it in others can be a more fundamental sexual disposition (primary sexual orientation). Fetishism fetish fetishists law legislation sexuality preference orientation sexual orientation sexual disposition queer queer theory gender studies gender and queer studies sexual minorities sexology fetishism studies fetish studies normativity heteronormativity lgbtq visibility erasure sex orientation norm Fetischism fetisch fetischister lag lagstiftning diskrimineringslag diskrimineringslagstiftning sexualitet preferens sexuell preferens läggning sexuell läggning orientering sexuell orientering queer queerteori genusvetenskap sexuella minoriteter sexologi begär fetischismforskning fetischforskning heteronorm hbtq synlighet osynliggörande erasure normkritik könsorienteringsnorm könsorienteringsnormen Gender Studies Genusstudier
83	Sexualitet bortom kön : Fetischism som synliggörare av könsorienteringsnormen Nilsson-Jatko, David January 2021 (has links) Syftet med detta projekt är att granska nutida sexualitetsnormer. För att genomföra detta undersöks hur rådande föreställningar om sexualitet framstår i skenet av en referenspunkt utanför dagens hegemoni. Som sådan perspektivgivare tas sexualiteten fetischism, betraktad utifrån ickepatologiserande kunskapsideal. Budskap från statsmakt och upplysande aktörer granskas diskursanalytiskt och genealogiskt. Analysen indikerar att dagens situation är ett resultat av en politiserad kamp om begrepp och tolkningsföreträden som ägt rum under de senaste decennierna; i förarbeten som ligger till grund för lagstiftning i ämnet verkar selektiva och partiska metoder ha använts. Dagens läge kan sägas kännetecknas av en kulturdominans där statsmaktens föreställning om sexualitet kväser alternativ; en sanningsregim. Analysen pekar på en nutida könsorienteringsnorm: I dagens hegemoni konstrueras könsorientering som den allmänmänskliga grunden för varandet – hur en person är sexuellt lagd antas endast kunna ha att göra med hur hen relaterar sexuellt till kön. Sexualiteter som kännetecknas av annat än könsbegär andrafieras och konstrueras som labila och icke-konstitutiva praktiker; personer som är lagda på sätt som kännetecknas av annat än könsbegär orimliggörs. Med en avtagande föreställning om att alla förväntas vara strikt heterosexuella kan könsorienteringsnormen ses som en nutida ersättande norm. Den kan förstås som en fundamental del av heteronormen och dess idealiserade starka kopplingar mellan sexualitet och kropp/kön. Det förefaller relevant att tala om en hittills förbisedd intrasektionell makt- och marginaliseringsdimension som kännetecknas av könsorienteringsnormativiteten. / The aim of this project is to critically examine contemporary sexuality norms. This is conducted by examining how current assumptions about sexuality holds up when put into perspective given by a point of reference outside of the current hegemony: fetishism. Definitions and information from Swedish legislators, educational actors, sexual health clinics and minority rights organisations are subjected to a genealogical and critical discourse analysis. The results indicate the presence of a contemporary sex orientation norm: In the present hegemony, sex orientation in general is constructed as part of the natural and universal way to be human while other sexualities are otherized and constructed as non-constitutive practices. With a waning expectation of all-encompassing heterosexuality, the sex orientation norm appears to be a present-day effectual norm. It can be understood as an integral part of heteronormativity. The analysis also points to a previously overlooked intrasectional dimension of analysis, corresponding to the sex orientation norm. Sex orientation norm queer queer theory fetishism fetish fetishists law legislation sexuality preference orientation sexual orientation sexual disposition gender studies gender and queer studies sexual minorities sexology fetishism studies fetish studies normativity heteronormativity lgbtq visibility erasure culture dominance Könsorienteringsnorm könsorienteringsnormen queer queerteori fetischism fetisch fetischister lag lagstiftning diskrimineringslag diskrimineringslagen diskrimineringslagstiftning sexualitet preferens sexuell preferens läggning sexuell läggning orientering sexuell orientering genusvetenskap minoriteter sexuella minoriteter sexologi sexualvetenskap begär fetischismforskning fetischforskning heteronorm heteronormen hbtq synlighet osynliggörande erasure norm normer normkritik sanningsregim marginalisering intersektionalitet strukturellt förtryck genealogi kulturdominans Gender Studies Genusstudier
84	The function and significance of war names in the Zimbabwean armed conflict (1966-1979) Pfukwa, Charles 01 1900 (has links) This study is a survey of war names adopted by guerrillas during the Zimbabwean conflict (1966-1979). The study collects, describes and analyses war names that were used by ZANLA guerrillas in the conflict. It explores onomastic patterns and processes that influenced these war names. Names collected from textual sources and from interviews of former guerrillas are analysed and classified into nine categories. One of the main findings is that the background of the namer influenced the naming patterns and processes identified in the study. Another finding is that most guerrillas named themselves and it was also observed that some guerrillas have retained their names. The findings, analysed within the theoretical framework developed earlier from the onomastic and identity theories, indicate that the war name plays a vital role not only in concealing the old identity of the guerrilla but also in creating new identities, which were used as weapons for challenging the enemy and contesting space. Onomastic erasure and resuscitation are proposed as partial explanation for the creation of some war names. The study contributes to onomastic research not only in that it has produced a large corpus of war names that can be used for further research in that it is a significant point of reference in onomastic research in Zimbabwe and in southern Africa, especially in the area of nicknames and war names. It also lays the foundation for further research on the role of naming patterns and processes in peace building and conflict resolution in Zimbabwe, on the southern African subcontinent and elsewhere. / Thesis (D. Litt et Phil.) Chimurenga Connotation Denotation Descriptive backing Erasure Guerrillas Identity Ideology Onomastics Shona War names 929.409689109046 Connotation (Linguistics) Identity
85	Re-embodying jurisprudence: using theatre and multimedia arts-based methods to support critical thinking, feeling and transformation in law Dhaliwal, Manpreet (Preeti) Kaur 01 May 2017 (has links) This thesis offers theoretical and practical explorations of how multimedia arts-based methods and embodied storytelling support critical and transformative understandings of law. Using theatre as both subject and method, the author demonstrates how laws live in bodies, with a focus on race, whiteness, migration and the Komagata Maru. Drawing on various theatre practices as well as critical race, feminist and performance scholarship, the author calls for a new way of interacting with law: jurisprudential theatre. Jurisprudential theatre is a method that employs autobiography, utopian visioning, legal research and audience involvement to create plays that examine existing law while filling affective spaces that existing law neglects. This method builds an alternate archive that supplements existing laws but can also be used to study them. The author explains the method through a performance art piece titled Re-embodying. She then uses jurisprudential theatre to examine the legal history of the Komagata Maru through case law and two play texts, all of which lay the groundwork for the method’s application in the first draft of a play titled Eustitia. “Rather than laying my life and research out in a chronological, linear fashion with smooth transitions, this thesis blends scholarly, autobiographical, episodic and creative writing – sometimes abrupt, sometimes guided. This framework takes you on a journey to the Komagata Maru through my experiences and understandings of race, whiteness, law and trauma. This thesis asks you to bear witness while offering you life stories, performance art, the draft of a play, images and academic prose. I invite you to join me in a creative and performative process that will move you beyond the confines of the page to online worlds and internal realms. Why? To study and experience (as best we can in a text-based relationship) the internal and embodied consequences of law alongside its external, material and relational impacts.” / Graduate / 0465 / 0398 / 0631 / dhaliwal.preeti@gmail.com Critical Race Theory Storytelling Race Theatre Trauma Whiteness Komagata Maru MV Sun Sea Erasure Performance Studies Performance Art Witness Autobiography Law Legal History White Supremacy Critical race Embodiment Critical legal migration immigration law Applied theatre performance repertoire jurisprudence legal imagination Decolonization
86	Utilization of forward error correction (FEC) techniques with extensible markup language (XML) schema-based binary compression (XSBC) technology Norbraten, Terry D. 12 1900 (has links) Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / In order to plug-in current open sourced, open standard Java programming technology into the building blocks of the US Navy's ForceNet, first, stove-piped systems need to be made extensible to other pertinent applications and then a new paradigm of adopting extensible and cross-platform open technologies will begin to bridge gaps with old and new weapons systems. The battle-space picture in real time and with as much detail, or as little detail needed is now a current vital requirement. Access to this information via wireless laptop technology is here now. Transmission of data to increase the resolution of that battle-space snapshot will invariably be through noisy links. Noisy links such as found in the shallow water littoral regions of interest will be where Autonomous Underwater and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (AUVs/UUVs) are gathering intelligence for the sea warrior in need of that intelligence. The battle-space picture built from data transmitted within these noisy and unpredictable acoustic regions demands efficiency and reliability features abstract to the user. To realize this efficiency Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schema-based Binary Compression (XSBC), in combination with Vandermode-based Forward Error Correction (FEC) erasure codes, offer the qualities of efficient streaming of plain text XML documents in a highly compressed form, and a data self-healing capability should there be loss of data during transmission in unpredictable transmission mediums. Both the XSBC and FEC libraries detailed in this thesis are open sourced Java Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that can be readily adapted for extensible, cross-platform applications that will be enhanced by these desired features to add functional capability to ForceNet for the sea warrior to access on demand, at sea and in real-time. These features will be presented in the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Workbench (AUVW) Java-based application that will become a valuable tool for warriors involved with Undersea Warfare (UW). / Lieutenant, United States Navy Computer simulation XML (Document markup language) Erasure codes Extensible markup language (XML) Forward error correction (FEC)
87	L'imputabilité en droit pénal / Imputability in penal law Gomez, Elisabeth 17 November 2017 (has links) Après une intrusion chaotique dans la théorie de la responsabilité pénale, l’imputabilité peut aujourd’hui apparaître comme une donnée d’essence classique. Elle répond à une définition subjective faisant consensus en doctrine et supposant l’addition du discernement et d’une volonté libre de l’agent. Dans le prolongement, elle est unanimement entendue comme constituant le fondement de la responsabilité pénale. Cependant, la cohabitation entre les différentes conditions de la responsabilité pénale, en particulier entre les concepts de culpabilité et d’imputabilité, n’est peut-être pas aussi pacifiée qu’il n’y paraît. En réalité, la question de l’indépendance des notions n’a jamais été clairement résolue, car leurs composantes respectives participent des conditions subjectives à l’engagement de la responsabilité pénale. Pourtant, la question est loin d’être anecdotique, en particulier si l’on considère certaines institutions fondamentales du droit pénal, au rang desquelles figurent les notions d’infraction et de complicité. Il apparaît ainsi, à l’analyse, que la définition traditionnelle de l’imputabilité mérite quelques ajustements, conduisant à une reconfiguration du champ de la condition de liberté relevant de l’imputabilité. Cette recherche vise aussi à établir que l’imputabilité est une donnée étrangère à l’infraction concrètement commise. Cette place spécifique au sein de la responsabilité pénale, mettant en évidence le lien entre l’imputabilité et la sanction infligée en rétribution de l’infraction commise, permet d’adopter une vision plus large du concept, susceptible d’affronter le bouleversement consécutif à l’entrée du droit pénal dans l’ère de la post-modernité. Cette dernière, que l’on pourrait associer au néopositivisme pénal du début du siècle, s’est accompagnée d’une résurgence des concepts de risque et de dangerosité. L’impact de cette évolution sur l’imputabilité peut apparaître radical : rupture du caractère unitaire de la notion, émergence du concept d’imputation à l’égard des personnes morales, voire même effacement pur et simple de l’imputabilité à l’égard des personnes physiques. Pourtant, des modalités de restauration de l’exigence d’imputabilité seront envisagées sur les terrains substantiel, par le truchement de l’imputabilité comprise comme capacité pénale, et processuel – par des propositions concernant les procédures pensées en considération de la psychologie de l’agent. Au bout du compte, il apparaît que l’imputabilité est de nature à jouer un rôle décisif dans l’organisation d’une cohabitation raisonnée avec le concept de dangerosité, en condamnant la prise en compte de la dangerosité seulement hypothétique sans exclure la possibilité d’une rétention après la peine. / After a chaotic intrusion in the theory of penal liability, imputability can today appear as a classical notion. The general doctrinal consensus is that it depends on a subjective definition, implying the offender’s discernment and free will. Moreover, the notion of imputability is unanimously considered as the basis of penal liability. However, cohabitation between the various conditions of penal liability, particularly between the concepts of guilt and imputability, may not be as steady as it seems. Indeed, the independence of these notions has actually never been clearly demonstrated, for their respective components represent the subjective conditions creating penal liability. Nevertheless, this topic is far from being anecdotal, specifically among several fundamental institutions of criminal Law, in which the notions of infraction and complicity are involved. Thus, the definition of imputability may deserve some adjustments, and imply, consequently, a reworking of the release condition coming under imputability. This study also aims at proving that imputability is an irrelevant element to the concretely committed offence. This specific part in penal liability, highlighting the link between imputability and the penalty imposed in response to the committed offence, enables a wider vision of the concept that could help facing the upheaval resulting from the entry of criminal Law in the post-modernity era. The latter, that one could associate with the beginning of the century’s penal neopositivism, also implied the resurgence of the concepts of risk and dangerousness. The impact of this evolution about imputability may seem radical : end of the unitary aspect of the notion, emergence of the concept of imputation towards legal entities, and even total erasure of imputability towards natural persons. And yet, some solutions to the reconstitution of the exigence of imputability will be developed, not only in a substantial approach, where imputability will be understood as penal capacity, but also in a procedural approach – thanks to suggestions of procedures taking the offender’s psyche into account. In the end, imputability seems to play a major part in the organization of a balanced cohabitation with the concept of dangerousness, by condemning a strictly hypothetical consideration of dangerousness, without excluding a potential reservation after the penalty. Imputabilité Culpabilité Liberté psychologique Discernement Extériorité à l'infraction Post-Modernité Néopositivisme pénal Risque Dangerosité Personnes morales Effacement de l'imputabilité Personnes physiques Imputabilité comme capacité pénale Imputability Guilt Psychological freedom Discernment Exteriority to the offence Post-Modernity Penal neopositivism Risk Dangerousness Moral entities Erasure of imputability Natural persons Imputability as penal capacity
88	A toponymic perspective on Zimbabwe’s post-2000 land reform programme (Third Chimurenga) Jenjekwa, Vincent 11 1900 (has links) Text in English / This qualitative study presents an onomastic perspective on the changing linguistic landscape of Zimbabwe which resulted from the post-2000 land reforms (also known as the Third Chimurenga). When veterans of Zimbabwe’s War of Liberation assumed occupancy of former white-owned farms, they immediately pronounced their take-over of the land through changes in place names. The resultant toponymic landscape is anchored in the discourses of the First and Second Chimurenga. Through recasting the Chimurenga (war of liberation) narrative, the proponents of the post-2000 land reforms endeavoured to create a historical continuum from the colonisation of Zimbabwe in 1890 to the post-2000 reforms, which were perceived as an attempt to redress the historical anomaly of land inequality. The aim of this study is to examine toponymic changes on the geo-linguistic landscape, and establish the extent of the changes and the post-colonial identity portrayed by these place names. Within the case study design, research methods included in-depth interviews, document study and observations as means of data generation. Through the application of critical and sociolinguistic theories in the form of post-colonial theory, complemented by geo-semiotics, political semiotics and language ecology, this study uncovers the richness of toponymy in exposing a cryptic social narrative reflective of, among others, contestations of power. The findings indicate that post-2000 toponymy is a complex mixture of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial place names. These names recast the various narratives in respect of the history of Zimbabwe through the erasure of colonial toponyms and resuscitation older Chimurenga names. The resultant picture portrayed by post-2000 toponymy communicates a complex message of contested land ownership in Zimbabwe. There is a pronounced legacy of colonial toponymy that testifies to the British Imperial occupation of the land and the ideologies behind colonisation. This presence of colonial toponymy many years after independence is an ironic confirmation of the indelible legacy of British colonialism in Zimbabwe. The findings show a clear recasting of the discourses of violence and racial hostility, but also reveal an interesting trend of toponymic syncretism where colonial names are retained and used together with new names. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics) Onomastics Toponymy Toponymic landscape Ethnic slurs Geo-linguistic landscape Erasure Resuscitation Geo-semiotics Political semiotics Post-colonial theory Colonisation Post-coloniality Land reform 910.014096891 Decolonization -- Zimbabwe Sociolinguistics -- Zimbabwe
89	Adaptive Resource Allocation for Statistical QoS Provisioning in Mobile Wireless Communications and Networks Du, Qinghe 2010 December 1900 (has links) Due to the highly-varying wireless channels over time, frequency, and space domains, statistical QoS provisioning, instead of deterministic QoS guarantees, has become a recognized feature in the next-generation wireless networks. In this dissertation, we study the adaptive wireless resource allocation problems for statistical QoS provisioning, such as guaranteeing the specified delay-bound violation probability, upper-bounding the average loss-rate, optimizing the average goodput/throughput, etc., in several typical types of mobile wireless networks. In the first part of this dissertation, we study the statistical QoS provisioning for mobile multicast through the adaptive resource allocations, where different multicast receivers attempt to receive the common messages from a single base-station sender over broadcast fading channels. Because of the heterogeneous fading across different multicast receivers, both instantaneously and statistically, how to design the efficient adaptive rate control and resource allocation for wireless multicast is a widely cited open problem. We first study the time-sharing based goodput-optimization problem for non-realtime multicast services. Then, to more comprehensively characterize the QoS provisioning problems for mobile multicast with diverse QoS requirements, we further integrate the statistical delay-QoS control techniques — effective capacity theory, statistical loss-rate control, and information theory to propose a QoS-driven optimization framework. Applying this framework and solving for the corresponding optimization problem, we identify the optimal tradeoff among statistical delay-QoS requirements, sustainable traffic load, and the average loss rate through the adaptive resource allocations and queue management. Furthermore, we study the adaptive resource allocation problems for multi-layer video multicast to satisfy diverse statistical delay and loss QoS requirements over different video layers. In addition, we derive the efficient adaptive erasure-correction coding scheme for the packet-level multicast, where the erasure-correction code is dynamically constructed based on multicast receivers’ packet-loss statuses, to achieve high error-control efficiency in mobile multicast networks. In the second part of this dissertation, we design the adaptive resource allocation schemes for QoS provisioning in unicast based wireless networks, with emphasis on statistical delay-QoS guarantees. First, we develop the QoS-driven time-slot and power allocation schemes for multi-user downlink transmissions (with independent messages) in cellular networks to maximize the delay-QoS-constrained sum system throughput. Second, we propose the delay-QoS-aware base-station selection schemes in distributed multiple-input-multiple-output systems. Third, we study the queueaware spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks for statistical delay-QoS provisioning. Analyses and simulations are presented to show the advantages of our proposed schemes and the impact of delay-QoS requirements on adaptive resource allocations in various environments. Mobile multicast wireless networks quality-of-service (QoS) rate adaptation layered video coding error control low-complexity erasure codes statistical QoS guarantees multiuser communications resource allocation effective capacity cellular networks optimization power and rate control cognitive radio networks energy detection spectrum sensing wireless fading channels multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) distributed MIMO
90	Experimental Studies On A New Class Of Combinatorial LDPC Codes Dang, Rajdeep Singh 05 1900 (has links) We implement a package for the construction of a new class of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes based on a new random high girth graph construction technique, and study the performance of the codes so constructed on both the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel as well as the Binary Erasure Channel (BEC). Our codes are “near regular”, meaning thereby that the the left degree of any node in the Tanner graph constructed varies by at most 1 from the average left degree and so also the right degree. The simulations for rate half codes indicate that the codes perform better than both the regular Progressive Edge Growth (PEG) codes which are constructed using a similar random technique, as well as the MacKay random codes. For high rates the ARG (Almost Regular high Girth) codes perform better than the PEG codes at low to medium SNR’s but the PEG codes seem to do better at high SNR’s. We have tried to track both near codewords as well as small weight codewords for these codes to examine the performance at high rates. For the binary erasure channel the performance of the ARG codes is better than that of the PEG codes. We have also proposed a modiﬁcation of the sum-product decoding algorithm, where a quantity called the “node credibility” is used to appropriately process messages to check nodes. This technique substantially reduces the error rates at signal to noise ratios of 2.5dB and beyond for the codes experimented on. The average number of iterations to achieve this improved performance is practically the same as that for the traditional sum-product algorithm. Computer Mathematics Low Density Parity Check Codes Graph Construction Technique Sum-Product Algorithm Decoding Algorithms Progressive Edge Growth (PEG) Codes Almost Regular High Girth (ARG) Codes Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) Binary Erasure Channel (BEC) High Girth Construction LDPC Codes Computer Science

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