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Since the Depression era there has been an evolution in parkway usage. Parkways have outlived their recreational function and now must also serve as routes to recreational facilities. Since the elemental use of parkways has drastically changed, questions of how and why beg to be answered. How has parkway design and construction changed from the Depression era to today in terms of views, alignment, vegetation, natural and cultural features, and parkway details. How is parkway design and construction different from that of typical roadways; and how does this information effect the future design and construction of parkways? In addition, why can parkways no longer serve the same purpose that they did in the past? This thesis examines these questions through the creation of the Lorton - Laurel Hill Parkway. The main characteristics studied in this thesis will continue to be vital in future parkway design and construction. This thesis expresses that parkways can no longer serve as a destination, but instead must become an introduction to a recreational facility. Parkways will become increasingly important in the future as they can provide relief to congested roadways while simultaneously providing the motorist with an aesthetically pleasing entrance to recreational facilities. In the future, the components studied here must be instituted into highway and road engineering. The construction of motorways that incorporate parkway design principles will create more successful and vibrant routes between urban centers and their surrounding communities, and in so doing will increase the quality of life of its population. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Στην εργασία μας με τίτλο «Ανάπτυξη διαδικτυακού συστήματος βάσης δεδομένων με λειτουργικότητα ανάκτησης ιατρικών εικόνων» αρχικά παραθέσαμε τις τεχνικές που έχουν αναπτυχθεί από τις αρχές της δημιουργίας του τομέα της ανάκτησης εικόνας μέχρι σήμερα. Παρότι έχουν γίνει πολλές προσπάθειες για την ανάπτυξη μεθόδων οι οποίες θα βασίζονται αποκλειστικά στο περιεχόμενο τους, έως σήμερα οι περισσότερες μηχανές αναζήτησης βασίζονται ακόμη στην ομοιότητα των εικόνων βάσει των μεταδεδομένων που τις περιγράφουν.Στη συνέχεια κάναμε μια μικρή αναφορά σε ιατρικά συστήματα ανάκτησης ιατρικών εικόνων που έχουν δημιουργηθεί μέχρι σήμερα , όπως επίσης και στα αποτελέσματα του διαγωνισμού imageCLEF, ο οποίος διεξάγεται κάθε χρόνο από το 2003. Ο διαγωνισμός έχει δύο σκέλη , την ανάκτηση βάσει περιεχομένου και την ανάκτηση βάσει κειμένου, γι’ αυτό και συμμετέχουν πολλές ομάδες που ασχολούνται με την επεξεργασία φυσικής γλώσσας. Κάθε χρόνο η δυσκολία του διαγωνισμού αυξάνεται θέτοντας νέες προκλήσεις στις συμμετέχουσες ομάδες. Σύμφωνα με τα αποτελέσματα του διαγωνισμού τα καλύτερα αποτελέσματα προκύπτουν από το συνδυασμό μεθόδων και από τις δύο κατηγορίες ανάκτησης. Το σύστημα που αναπτύξαμε χρησιμοποιεί και τις δυο παραπάνω τεχνικές. Η ανάκτηση βάσει κειμένου πραγματοποιείται χρησιμοποιώντας λέξεις κλειδιά που υπάρχουν ήδη στη βάση. Ενώ για την ανάκτηση βάσει περιεχομένου εξάγουμε δύο χαρακτηριστικά , το ιστόγραμμα χρώματος και το autocorrelogram, τα οποία τα αποθηκεύουμε ως διανύσματα στη βάση και όταν θέλουμε να κάνουμε ένα ερώτημα εξάγουμε τα ίδια χαρακτηριστικά από την εικόνα ερώτημα. Η σύγκριση των δυο διανυσμάτων γίνεται υπολογίζοντας την Ευκλείδεια απόσταση μεταξύ του διανύσματος της εικόνας ερωτήματος και όλων των άλλων εικόνων της βάσης. / In our thesis, titled "Web based database system development with functionality of medical image retrieval" we present the retrieval techniques which have been developed until today. Therefore there have been done many e orts on development of methods which will rely on image content, until today most search engines (eg Google, Yahoo!) return relevant results by using text based image retrieval. Thereafter we cited some medical image retrieval systems which have been developed until today, as well as the results of imageCLEF contest, which is carried out from 2003 and every year since then. The contest has two parts, text based image retrieval and content based image retrieval, that' s the reason why many groups participated in the contest, deal with natural language processing. Every year the di culty increased and new challenges were posed to the participants. According to the results of the contest the best systems came from the combination of the two image retrieval categories. The system we developed uses the two techniques we mentioned above. Text based image retrieval is implemented by using keywords which exist in the database. While for content based image retrieval we extract two characteristics, colour histogram and autocorrelogram, which are saved as vectors in the database and when we make a query we extract the same characteristics from the image query. To compare the images we compute the distances between the image query vector and and all the other image vectors of the database. The above methods incorporated into SIDB, which is an online database management system. The system has been developed using PHP and postgreSQL and the images which have been used are medical exams from di erent parts of the human body. The biggest part of which come from the IRMA database, which has been created at Aachen University and which was used for many years in ImageCLEF competition.

Daugumos hidrotechnikos statinių ir jų konstrukcijų statyboje pagrindinė naudojama medžiaga yra betonas ir gelžbetonis. Kadangi šie statiniai pastoviai sąveikauja su agresyvia aplinka (vandens lygių svyravimas, vandens slėgis, šaltis, saulės radiacija, vėjas, ledas) jie turi ypatingai pasižymėti patvarumu ir ilgaamžiškumu. Todėl šios konstrukcijos privalo būti atsparios minėtiems veiksniams. Betonui kietėjant atsiranda nepageidaujamas reiškinys - betono susitraukimas. Dėl susitraukimo betone atsiranda mikroplyšiai ir įtrūkimai, o betonas tampa mažiau atsaparus minėtų veiksnių poveikiui. Todėl šiame darbe buvo atliekami bandymai su betono susitraukimą mažinančiais priedais, norint įšsiaiškinti kokią įtaką jie turi įvairioms betono savybėms. Šios medžiagos pagerina betono savybes, tai yra sumažina susitraukimą, vandens įgeriamumą, padidina atsparumą lenkimui ir gniuždymui, o tai suteikia konstrukcijoms patvarumą ir ilgaamžiškumą. Tyrimų metu buvo nustatinėjama susitraukimą mažinančių priedų įtaką betono mišinio tankiui, betono mišinio konsistencijai, betono susitraukimui, betono stipriui lenkiant, betono stipriui gniuždant, betono vandens įgeriamumui. Bandymų metu gautų rezultatų pagindu nustatyti efektyviausiai veikiantys priedai. / Concrete and reinforced concrete are the main materials used for most hydraulic constructions and its structures building. Since these constructions constantly interact with aggressive environment (water levels fluctuation, water pressure, cold, sun radiation, wind, ice), it have to be durable and long-term. Therefore these constructions have to be resistant to mentioned factors. When concrete is hardening, often unwelcome phenomenon appears – concrete shrinkage. Due to the shrinkage of the concrete occurs the microcracks and the crack, and the concrete becomes less resistant for aggressive environment. So in this final work there were done many tests with concrete shrinkage redusing additives mix, in order to find out what influence they have to variuos concrete features. These materials improve concrete features, it means reduce shrinkage, water absorption, increase resistance to bending and compression. This gives stability and long-term to constructions. During the research it was determined shrinkage redusing additions influence to concrete mixture density, consistency, concrete shrinkage, bending strength, compressive strength, water absorption. During the research results effectively acting additions were determined.

According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) official reports, many traffic accidents have been caused due to drivers’ drowsiness. Previous work based on computer vision techniques achieved drowsiness detection, usually with special hardware that depended on laboratory environments. To overcome limitations of these approaches, a natural light based surveillance system is proposed. The system achieves drowsiness detection in three stages: face segmentation, drowsiness feature extraction and classification. To segment faces, a simplified skin colour model is developed to compute colour distance maps from original facial images. Candidate faces are located using colour distance maps in conjunction with centres of gravity of individual faces. Gegenbauer features are then applied to capture shape information that is related to drowsiness. The computation of these features is based on moments derived from coefficients of Gegenbauer polynomials. To detect the behaviour of a subject, image sequences of his/her face are classified into drowsy and nondrowsy states by a Hidden Markov Model using Gegenbauer features. A sequence is classified as drowsy if the number of drowsy states in the Hidden Markov Model reaches a pre-defined threshold. To evaluate the proposed system, experiments are conducted using 65 video clips that contained a mixture of 54 drowsy and 11 non-drowsy behaviours. The proposed system detected 47 drowsy behaviours from these video clips successfully, and thus resulting in a detection rate of 87%. This proposed system is independent of infrared illuminators that were found to be unreliable in previous systems. Furthermore, the new system deploys multiple facial features and presents a more accurate description of drowsiness rather than a single facial feature proposed by previous authors.

E-CRM emerges from the Internet and web technology to facilitate the implementation of CRM; it focuses on Internet or web-based interaction between companies and their customers. In particular, E-CRM enables companies to provide appropriate services and products to satisfy the customers and enhance customer loyalty. Furthermore, E-CRM features are vital for managing customer relationships online. They are generally referred to as concrete website functionality or tools and they are required for customising, personalising and interacting with the customer. Without E-CRM features, CRM could not be realised on the Internet. In fact, in the literature, there appears to be an absence of theoretical models for E-CRM implementation in general, and E-CRM features in particular. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies focusing on identification of the importance and categorisation of E-CRM features within different stages of transaction cycle. Consequently, this dissertation attempts to fill the information gap based on empirical data derived from survey. The aim of this dissertation was to examine the relationship between E-CRM features and ELoyalty at the different stages of transaction cycle (pre-purchase, at-purchase, and postpurchase) on mobile phone companies websites in UK. The results from this study show that the use of E-CRM in building consumer relationships affects online consumer satisfaction and loyalty. The efficiency of E-CRM program determine the level of which online features, such as search capabilities, security/privacy, payment methods, and online customer support would be implemented on mobile companies’ websites. This research contributes to knowledge in several ways. Most importantly, it illustrates the roles of E-CRM features in enhancing online consumer loyalty at different stages of purchase cycle leading to long-term consumer relationships. In particular, this research highlights the critical features of E-CRM program, which mobile phone companies’ websites in UK should in vest in their consumer loyalty strategies.

The central theme of the thesis is an in-depth translation criticism of the Austrian novel Die Liebhaberinnen by Elfriede Jelinek in the translation of Jitka Jílková. The criticism is based on the theoretical model of Katharina Reiss which is explored in her work Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Übersetzungskritik. This model is expanded by the role of the editor and translationese style. At the end of the thesis Jitka Jílková is briefly presented, the translation analysis is summarised and evaluated with regard to an interview with the translator about her work.

Dans cette thèse, nous explorons l'analyse syntaxique robuste statistique du français. Notre principal souci est de trouver des méthodes qui permettent au linguiste d'injecter des connaissances et/ou des ressources linguistiques dans un moteur statistique afin d'améliorer les résultats de certains phénomènes spécifiques. D'abord nous décrivons le schéma d'annotation en dépendances du français, et les algorithmes capables de produire cette annotation, en particulier le parsing par transitions. Après avoir exploré les algorithmes d'apprentissage automatique supervisé pour les problèmes de classification en TAL, nous présentons l'analyseur syntaxique Talismane développé dans le cadre de cette thèse et comprenant quatre modules statistiques – le découpage en phrases, la segmentation en mots, l'étiquetage morpho-syntaxique et le parsing – ainsi que les diverses ressources linguistiques utilisées par le modèle de base. Nos premières expériences tentent d'identifier la meilleure configuration de base parmi de nombreuses configurations possibles. Ensuite nous explorons les améliorations apportées par la recherche par faisceau et la propagation du faisceau. Enfin nous présentons une série d'expériences dont le but est de corriger des erreurs linguistiques spécifiques au moyen de traits ciblés. Une de nos innovations est l'introduction des règles qui imposent ou interdisent certaines décisions locales, permettant ainsi de contourner le modèle statistique. Nous explorons l'utilisation de règles pour les erreurs que les traits n'ont pu corriger. Finalement, nous présentons une expérience semi-supervisée avec une ressource de sémantique distributionnelle. / In this thesis we explore robust statistical syntax analysis for French. Our main concern is to explore methods whereby the linguist can inject linguistic knowledge and/or resources into the robust statistical engine in order to improve results for specific phenomena. We first explore the dependency annotation schema for French, concentrating on certain phenomena. Next, we look into the various algorithms capable of producing this annotation, and in particular on the transition-based parsing algorithm used in the rest of this thesis. After exploring supervised machine learning algorithms for NLP classification problems, we present the Talismane toolkit for syntax analysis, built within the framework of this thesis, including four statistical modules - sentence boundary detection, tokenisation, pos-tagging and parsing - as well as the various linguistic resources used for the baseline model, including corpora, lexicons and feature sets. Our first experiments attempt various machine learning configurations in order to identify the best baseline. We then look into improvements made possible by beam search and beam propagation. Finally, we present a series of experiments aimed at correcting errors related to specific linguistic phenomena, using targeted features. One our innovation is the introduction of rules that can impose or prohibit certain decisions locally, thus bypassing the statistical model. We explore the usage of rules for errors that the features are unable to correct. Finally, we look into the enhancement of targeted features by large scale linguistic resources, and in particular a semi-supervised approach using a distributional semantic resource.

O crescimento do volume de dados ocasionado pelo desenvolvimento tecnológico atual, tem sido fortemente evocado como premissa para a utilização de técnicas que auxiliem a exploração, análise e entendimento desses dados. Um conjunto dessas técnicas está compreendido na área de Visualização de Dados, que proporciona maneiras visuais de identificar padrões e tendências, além de extrair características obscuras dos dados. Tais abordagens podem ser aplicadas a qualquer problema que culmine na análise de dados. Um desses problemas é a utilização do som como ferramenta para descrever as características de uma paisagem, área denominada análise de Paisagens Acústicas. Nesta pesquisa de mestrado é apresentada uma abordagem visual para análise de Paisagens Acústicas. Essa abordagem consiste em duas etapas, sendo que na primeira são aplicadas técnicas visuais (Projeção Multidimensional t-SNE) e numéricas (Coeficiente de Silhueta) para avaliar quais conjuntos de características melhor descrevem uma Paisagem Acústica específica. A segunda etapa utiliza técnicas de visualização para analisar diferenças globais e características específicas de paisagens terrestres e aquáticas. Para isso foram utilizados o Mapa de Calor, as Coordenadas Paralelas e a xHiPP, uma extensão da projeção HiPP. A xHiPP busca melhorar a HiPP para alcançar melhor capacidade de análise e flexibilidade de aplicação. Com a aplicação das etapas apresentadas foi possível encontrar evidências de que o Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients formam um conjunto de atributos eficaz para representação e segregação de Paisagens Acústicas. Também foi possível verificar que as técnicas de visualização empregadas na análise são capazes de destacar atributos semelhantes dos áudios, facilitando a análise, permitindo que o usuário dê enfoque às características relevantes do ambiente, no lugar de analisar áudios individuais para extrair informações. / The growth of data volume caused by current technological development has been strongly evoked as a premise for use of techniques that help exploration, analysis, and understanding of data. A subset of these techniques is yielded by the field of Data Visualization, which provides visual manners to identify patterns and trends, as well as the extraction of hidden data features. Such approaches can be applied to problems that aim at data analysis with a strong exploratory component. One such problem is the use of sound as a tool to describe environmental landscapes, named ecological Soundscapes. A visual approach to analysis Soundscapes is presented in this master research. The approach contains two steps, and the first step applies visual (tSNE Multidimensional Projection) and numeric (Silhouette Coefficient) techniques to evaluate attributes groups that better describe a specific Soundscape. The second step employs visual techniques to analysis global differences and specific features of the terrestrial and underwater environment. To achieve these goals, the research used Heatmap, Parallel Coordinates, and xHiPP, an extension of HiPP projection. The xHiPP enhanced HiPP to improve its analytical capabilities and flexibility. The presented steps were able to show evidence of the Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients is an effective attribute collection to represent and segregate Soundscapes. As well, visual techniques employed in the analysis are capable to highlight similar audio features, making exploration easy, allowing users to focus relevant environmental attributes, instead of analyzing individual audios to extraction some information.