Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 1996-08Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:32:40Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 teixeira_rg_me_ift.pdf: 565736 bytes, checksum: 47638723d76926fa1da8cc7e9ede904d (MD5) / Neste trabalho apresentamos o formalismo Hamiltoniano de Dirac para sistemas singulares, analisando inclusive a construção do gerador de transformações de gauge. A seguir discutimos brevemente a generalização, já conhecida, desse formalismo para o caso de Lagrangeanos singulares de segunda ordem fazendo também uma análise da estrutura de vínculos presente em tais teorias. Desenvolvemos então o formalismo de Hamilton-Jacobi para sistemas singulares fazendo sua generalização para Lagrangeanos de segunda ordem. Por último, ambos formalismos são aplicados à Eletrodinâmica de Podols y e os resultados obtidos são comparados. / In this work we study Dirac's Hamiltonian formulation for singular systems including the construction of the gauge transformations generator. Next we briefy discuss the generalization, already developed, of this formalism for singular second order La grangians. Besides that we also make an anlysis of the constrains structure present in such theories. Then we develop the Hamilton-Jacobi formalism for singular systems making its generalization for the case of second order Lagrangians. Finally, both formalisms are applied to Podols y's eletrodynamics and the obtained results are comparad.

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James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is known as one of the most difficult texts in all of literature. A one-to-one relationship, however, between a decoding reader and a presenting author is something Finnegans Wake does not incorporate in any traditional sense. Because of the ways in which Joyce manipulates language through assonance and multilingual references, his words are essentially freed from their dictionary definitions and rely instead on connotations. This essay looks at the text from the perspective of a first reading, a look that is then compared to a more 'authoritative' stance found in various glossaries, to see if the information found there takes precedence over the reader's imagination, and if self-made meanings remain 'appropriate' in the face of the explanations. The text is shown to become more of a device with which we produce meaning, rather than a story to which we are only passively listening or otherwise trying to understand. Instead, it celebrates obscure, often contradicting sense relations, which correspond to the dream-like nature of its nocturnal theme. Despite the sheer amount of historical references contained within, the first-time reader can proceed without the many glossaries that have been written on the work, and instead rely on a more creative and less disciplined method of examination. This essay is thus tainted with an inherent contradiction—it questions the transcriptive act epitomized by eager textual scholars set on elucidating the text's difficulties while simultaneously committing that act, but only in order to encourage readers that Finnegans Wake otherwise scares away and to suggest an alternate method of reading. Readers are thereby asked to relieve themselves of their domesticated behavior, and get involved. The difficulty of Finnegans Wake only appears when we read it in terms of conventional understanding, and should instead encourage us into becoming creative users.

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Thesis advisor: Patrick Byrne / In the late 19th century, Georg Cantor opened up the mathematical field of set theory with his development of transfinite numbers. In his radical departure from previous notions of infinity espoused by both mathematicians and philosophers, Cantor created new notions of transcendence in order to clearly described infinities of different sizes. Leading the opposition against Cantor's theory was Leopold Kronecker, Cantor's former mentor and the leading contemporary German mathematician. In their lifelong dispute over the transfinite numbers emerge philosophical disagreements over mathematical existence, consistency, and freedom. This thesis presents a short summary of Cantor's controversial theories, describes Cantor and Kronecker's philosophical ideas, and attempts to state clearly their differences of opinion. In the end, the author hopes to present the shock caused by Cantor's work and an appreciation of the two very different philosophies of mathematics represented by Cantor and Kronecker. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

<p>Safety assessment is a rational and systematic process for assessing the risk associated with the usage of a product. While the safety assessment process is important even when making a simple product, the true importance of this process comes into light when designing for example an aircraft, where a failure could possibly lead to the loss of human lives. However,even though this process is vital for certain industries, it is plagued by a lack of tools. The existing tools are focused on specific parts of the process and do not make use of work done in earlier steps of the process which often means that the safety engineer needs to manually do work that could have been calculated automatically from information that is already present from an earlier step in the process.</p><p>This thesis shows that by creating a model of the product that can be present and augmented throughout every step in the process, many calculations that are currently done by hand can be automated or semi-automated by examining this shared model. The thesis proposes a specification for a modeling formalism that is simple enough to be used as early as the requirements phase of a project, but powerful enough to provide important information all the way throughout the safety assessment process.</p><p>The thesis also specifically shows how this model can be used to help in the creation and updating process of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) documents as a proof-of concept implementation based on Sörman Information AB’s product “Uptime BPC Standard”.Algorithms for synchronizing between the model and the FMEA representation, as well as algorithms for automatically calculating the next level effect and global level effect of failure modes based on the hierarchy and connections made in the model are also presented.</p><p>The prototype implementation shows that even though the entire safety assessment process cannot be automated it is possible to extract information from the model by analyzing its hierarchy and connections. While more work still needs to be done before the entire safety assessment process can be encompassed, the initial results shows that the proposed modeling formalism allows us to create models from which relevant information that can be used to support the safety assessment process can be calculated.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Comparative Literature, June 1997. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The massive volumes and the huge variety of large knowledge bases make information exploration and analysis difficult. An important activity is data filtering and selection, in which both querying and visualization play important roles. Interfaces for data exploration environments normally include both, integrating them as tightly as possible. But many features of information exploration environments, such as visual representation of queries, visualization of query results, interactive data selection from visualizations, have only been studied separately. The intrinsic connections between them have not been described formally. The lack of formal descriptions inhibits the development of techniques that produce new representations for queries, and natural integration of visual query specification with query result visualization. This thesis describes a formalism that describes the basic components of information exploration and and their relationships in information exploration environments. The key aspect of the formalism is that it unifies querying and visualization within a single framework, which provides a foundation for designing and analysing visual query interfaces. Various innovative designs of visual query representations can be derived from the formalism. Simply comparing them with existing ones is not enough, it is more important to discover why one visual representation is better or worse than another. To do this it is necessary to understand users’ cognitive activities, and to know how these cognitive activities are enhanced or inhibited by different presentations of a query so that novel interfaces can be created and improved based on user testing. This thesis presents a new experimental methodology for evaluating query representations, which uses stimulus onset asynchrony to separate different aspects of query comprehension. This methodology was used to evaluate a new visual query representation based on Karnaugh maps, and showing that there are two qualitatively different approaches to comprehension: deductive and inductive. The Karnaugh map representation scales extremely well with query complexity, and the experiment shows that its good scaling properties occur because it strongly facilitates inductive comprehension.

The massive volumes and the huge variety of large knowledge bases make information exploration and analysis difficult. An important activity is data filtering and selection, in which both querying and visualization play important roles. Interfaces for data exploration environments normally include both, integrating them as tightly as possible. But many features of information exploration environments, such as visual representation of queries, visualization of query results, interactive data selection from visualizations, have only been studied separately. The intrinsic connections between them have not been described formally. The lack of formal descriptions inhibits the development of techniques that produce new representations for queries, and natural integration of visual query specification with query result visualization. This thesis describes a formalism that describes the basic components of information exploration and and their relationships in information exploration environments. The key aspect of the formalism is that it unifies querying and visualization within a single framework, which provides a foundation for designing and analysing visual query interfaces. Various innovative designs of visual query representations can be derived from the formalism. Simply comparing them with existing ones is not enough, it is more important to discover why one visual representation is better or worse than another. To do this it is necessary to understand users’ cognitive activities, and to know how these cognitive activities are enhanced or inhibited by different presentations of a query so that novel interfaces can be created and improved based on user testing. This thesis presents a new experimental methodology for evaluating query representations, which uses stimulus onset asynchrony to separate different aspects of query comprehension. This methodology was used to evaluate a new visual query representation based on Karnaugh maps, and showing that there are two qualitatively different approaches to comprehension: deductive and inductive. The Karnaugh map representation scales extremely well with query complexity, and the experiment shows that its good scaling properties occur because it strongly facilitates inductive comprehension.

This essay examines the structural relationship between the folktale and the gothic novel with focus on characterization. This study will present a clearer definition of the now problematized gothic genre and show how newer genres are influenced by the older ones. This examination is done by doing a close-reading of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, which is generally known as the first gothic novel, and comparing it to formalist Vladimir Propp’s findings on the functions of the Russian folktale. Walpole’s novel is used as primary source of data and the key works by Propp is utilized as the theoretical framework. In addition, a couple of critical essays have been looked upon in relation to the previous works. This study finds that there are apparent similarities in structure and narrative in the gothic novel in relation to the folktale such as the presence of the same essential characters and functions. This proves the overlap between the two genres and it would be reasonable to conclude that the gothic genre consists of a part folktale. By the revelation of this previously unknown relationship between the folktale and the gothic genre this essay opens up for further research on the origin and influences of gothic fiction.