A clone is a set of finitary operations closed under composition and contain- ing all projections. We say it is finitely generated if there exist a finite subset {f1, . . . , fn} such that all the other operations can be expressed as compositions of f1, . . . , fn. We present examples of finitely and non-finitely genreated clones on finite sets. First, we demonstrate an explicit construction of operations in finitely generated clones. Secondly, we define relations such that the clones of compatible operations have restricted essential arity, and discuss several modifi- cations. Lastly, for every binary operation f which cannot be composed to yield an essentially ternary operation, we find a maximal clone of essentially at most binary operations containing f. 1

<p>More than 50% of wastewater biosolids are applied to agricultural fields as fertilizer in the U.S. This technique has been used for decades as a widely accepted beneficial reclamation method for biosolids, which meet the established regulatory levels for nutrients, metals, and pathogens. A major drawback to land application is the potential environmental release of non-regulated organic contaminants, which accumulate in biosolids during the wastewater treatment process. Recent studies have been performed to identify and quantify the presence of emerging contaminants in biosolids, and others have investigated the effects of compounds already identified as `priority pollutants' and whose use is waning. However, there is limited research on the effect of emerging organic contaminants on soil microbial ecology and nutrient cycling. Because many of the compounds found in biosolids are specifically designed to elicit biological modifications (e.g., antimicrobials), there is a risk that these compounds will disrupt microbial soil functions, decrease soil productivity, and ultimately affect the long term viability of these ecosystems, resulting in unforeseen economic and social costs. Therefore, there is a clear need to characterize the effects of novel contaminants on soil health.</p><p>This dissertation was divided into three distinct parts examining the impacts of emerging organic contaminants on soil microbial ecology with increasing complexity to better reflect environmental conditions. To assess the ecological impacts, the functional endpoint of denitrification was selected because it provides a vital indication of soil health. Denitrifying bacteria play a critical role in this process, and thus, were used as indicator organisms for determining contaminant ecotoxicological potential. Furthermore, antimicrobial agents (a.k.a., bactericides or biocides) were selected as model contaminants because they are designed specifically to deactivate microorganisms, are heavily used in the U.S with over $1 billion in yearly sales, and have been measured in biosolids.</p><p>Overall, the objectives of this dissertation were to: 1) develop a rapid, high-throughput functional assay that measured denitrification inhibition for screening potential ecological impacts of biosolids-derived antimicrobial agents, 2) determine the potential effects of common and emerging biosolids-derived antimicrobial agents on denitrification by a model soil denitrifier, Paracoccus denitrificans PD1222, 3) examine the impacts of the most commonly used antimicrobial, triclosan (TCS), on wastewater treatment efficiency in bench scale sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) coupled with anaerobic digesters, 4) examine the impacts of biosolids aged and spiked with TCS on denitrification under simulated agricultural soil conditions, and 5) evaluate potential impacts of TCS in `traditional' biosolids on denitrification in agricultural soil under field conditions.</p><p>The first phase of research pertaining to Objectives 1 and 2 examined the baseline interactions between biosolids-derived antimicrobial agents and soil microbial ecology. However, to isolate the effect of an individual contaminant from the myriad of contaminants found in biosolids, there was a need for developing a rapid, high-throughput method to evaluate general ecotoxicity. In the first part of this dissertation, we developed a novel assay that measured denitrification inhibition in a model soil denitrifier, Paracoccus denitrificans Pd1222. Two common (TCS and triclocarban) and four emerging (2,4,5 trichlorophenol, 2-benzyl-4-chlorophenol, 2-chloro-4-phenylphenol, and bis(5-chloro-2-hydroxyphenyl)methane) antimicrobial agents found in biosolids were analyzed as model contaminants. Overall, the assay was reproducible and measured impacts on denitrification over three orders of magnitude exposure. The lowest observable adverse effect concentrations (LOAECs) were 1.04 &mu;M for TCS, 3.17 &mu;M for triclocarban, 0.372 &mu;M for bis-(5-chloro-2-hydroxyphenyl)methane, 4.89 &mu;M for 2-chloro-4-phenyl phenol, 45.7 &mu;M for 2-benzyl-4-chorophenol, and 50.6 &mu;M for 2,4,5-trichlorophenol. Compared with gene expression and cell viability based methods, the denitrification assay was more sensitive and resulted in lower LOAECs. Of the six compounds examined, four resulted in LOAECs that were below or within an order of magnitude of concentrations that were measured in the environment, indicating potential ecological impacts.</p><p>In the second part of the dissertation, the impacts of emerging contaminants were examined first under laboratory conditions mimicking wastewater treatment processes (Objective 3) and then agricultural fields (Objective 4). For this phase, TCS, which is the most widely used antimicrobial agent and identified in the first phase for potential ecological impacts, was used as the model contaminant. To mimic wastewater treatment processes, bench scale SBRs coupled with anaerobic digesters were set up and operated. The SBRS and digesters were seeded with activated and anaerobically digested sludge from the North Durham Water Reclamation Facility (NDWRF, Durham, NC). Reactors were fed synthetic wastewater with or without 0.73 &muM of TCS. Samples were taken periodically to monitor chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonium (NH₄<super>+</super>), nitrate (NO₃<super>-</super>), nitrite (NO<sub>2</super>-</super>), total suspended solids (TSS), volatile suspended solids (VSS), dissolved oxygen (DO), and phosphate (PO₄<super>3-</super>) and pH. In addition, biomass samples were collected for DNA extraction and microbial community analysis using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) of 16S SSU rDNA. Methane production was also monitored for the anaerobic digesters. In addition, the final digested biosolids that were generated from the SBRs fed with and without TCS were analyzed for TCS concentration, TSS, VSS, TKN, phosphorus (as P₂O₅), potassium (as K₂O), and pH. Overall, biological processes associated with nitrogen removal (nitrification and denitrification), were impacted by TCS entering the SBRs regardless of the starting microbial community. Both of the SBRs that were not receiving TCS reached steady-state at greater than 92% NH₄<super>+</super>, removal within the first week of operation, whereas the SBRs receiving TCS took 42 and 63 days to reach steady-state removal at that level. However, while NH₄<super>+</super> removal was temporarily inhibited, elevated levels of NO₃<super>-</super> and NO₂<super>-</super> in the effluent of the TCS fed SBRs, suggested longer-term impacts on nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) and denitrifiers. After Day 58, the NO₃<super>-</super> effluent concentration for the SBRs receiving TCS was 3.9 ± 0.16 mg/L, which was 2.4 times greater than the NO₃<super>-</super> effluent of the SBRs not receiving TCS (1.7 ± 0.08 mg/L). Similarly, after Day 58, the NO₂<super>-</super> effluent of the SBRs receiving TCS reached a steady-state concentration of 8.7 ± 0.75 mg/L. The mean NO₂<super>-</super> concentration in the controls after Day 58 was 7.7 times lower at 1.1 ± 0.78 mg/L, but was still trending towards 0 when the reactors were stopped. No inhibition was observed for COD and PO₄<super>3-</super> removal. In addition, non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS) ordination analysis showed that the microbial communities between SBRS fed with and without TCS were similar on Day 0, but increased in difference to Day 41, around when the major changes in nitrification were observed. After a slight increase in similarity between the control and TCS SBR microbial communities on Day 41, the communities increased in difference to Day 63.</p><p>To mimic agricultural field conditions, containers of soil were amended with the biosolids generated from the SBRs. The containers were maintained in a growth-chamber to simulate field lighting and watering conditions. Three biosolids treatments were examined: 1) biosolids generated from the SBRs not fed TCS, but that still had low backgrounds of TCS (a.k.a., Control Biosolids); 2) biosolids generated from the SBRs fed with TCS (a.k.a., Aged TCS Biosolids); and 3) biosolids that were generated by the SBRs not fed TCS, but spiked with TCS 24 h before application (a.k.a., Spiked TCS Biosolids). Alfalfa was planted in half of the containers receiving the Control and Aged TCS Biosolids to assess differences due to vegetation. To assess the overall ecotoxicity of biosolids aged and spiked with TCS, the function, abundance, and diversity of the soil denitrifying communities were examined. The impacts on total bacteria abundance and diversity were also examined for comparison. Specifically, the denitrifying enzyme activity (DEA) assay was used to measure functional impacts, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used to measure impacts on abundance, and T-RFLP was used to measure impacts on diversity. Correlations between these methods were also examined for possible interactions between denitrifier function and community structure and to provide insight into targets of inhibition. Lastly, a denitrification inhibition score was developed to quantify global impacts of TCS on denitrification. The containers with plants that received biosolids aged with and spiked with TCS showed potential long-term inhibition based on measurement of soil denitrification at 26.9 ± 4.6 &mu;g/kg and 68.6 ± 26.9 &mu;g/kg of TCS, respectively. Denitrifier abundance and diversity, however, were more sensitive to TCS in biosolids and inhibition was observed throughout the experiment, with maximum inhibition on Days 7 and 28. Inhibition of denitrifier abundance and diversity was observed at TCS concentrations as low as 17.9 ± 1.93 &mu;g/L, which was about 10 to 3000 times lower than concentrations reported by other studies that showed impacts on other functional endpoints (i.e., respiration, phosphatase activity, NO₃<super>-</super> and NO₂<super>-</super> production, and Cy17 stress biomarker abundance), even after taking pH into account. Five significant correlations were developed, three of which related qPCR and the DEA assay, or abundance and activity. However, the analyses that were correlated did not yield the same results as far as significant inhibition in the presence of TCS. Thus, while the results suggested some relatedness between activity, abundance, and diversity, the results generally support the use of multiple methods to determine the ecotoxicity of biosolids-derived organic contaminants. As a result, a denitrification inhibition score was developed that took into account all three methods to determine the overall ecotoxicity of TCS in biosolids. Overall, the denitrification inhibition score showed that denitrification was inhibited by both biosolids that were aged and spiked with TCS over the extent of the 84 day experiment, but maximum inhibition occurred after a week to about a month. While the denitrification inhibition score indicated that the TCS in the biosolids aged with TCS was less bioavailable than in the spiked biosolids, the impacts of the aged and spiked biosolids could have also been due to differences in TCS concentrations.</p><p>Objective 5 consisted of a long-term soil sampling campaign on four agricultural fields receiving Class B municipal biosolids. Soil samples were taken before and after biosolids application and were analyzed to elucidate potential impacts of TCS in the biosolids on denitrification. Again, to assess the overall impacts of TCS on the soil denitrifying community, the DEA assay, qPCR, and T-RFLP were used to measure impacts on function, abundance, and diversity, respectively. Similar to Objective 4, the analysis included an examination of potential correlations between denitrifying community structure and function, and quantification of global impacts using the denitrification inhibition score. As expected, the results in this pilot-study reflected the complexity of the system that was analyzed and many more samples, which account for variables including, but not limited to soil characteristics, biosolids characteristics, biosolids application rates, and chemical composition and quantities, would be needed to show any statistically significant differences. Nevertheless, several key results were obtained. Again potential long-term inhibition of denitrification was observed using the DEA assay, however the effects of exhaustion of resources, such as NO₃<super>-</super>, or significant changes in the local environment were suspected, but could not be verified. Inhibition was also observed for denitrifier abundance, but little to no inhibition was observed when examining the relative number of denitrifying species. Thus, while the abundance of denitrifiers was reduced, and denitrification was eventually depressed, the number of species in the soil remained constant. When looking at the denitrification inhibition score, which took all three measurements into account, increased inhibition over time was observed with the exception of the measurements on Days 30 and 103, which indicated overall, but weak inhibition of denitrification by the application of biosolids. NMS ordinations showed no correlation between the shift in denitrifying microbial community and TCS. Because of the complexity of the soil and biosolids and because of the myriad of contaminants likely in the biosolids, the results may not be significant and a more in-depth study was recommended.</p><p>Overall, the results presented in this dissertation provide a systematic evaluation of the effects of biosolids-derived TCS on agricultural soil microbial ecology. First, it was demonstrated that statistically significant inhibition of denitrification could be used as a potential indicator of biosolids-derived emerging organic contaminant ecotoxicity. The denitrification assay that was developed was then used to analyze ecotoxicological potential of six emerging biosolids-derived antimicrobial agents, and found inhibition of denitrification at environmentally relevant concentrations. The most widely used antimicrobial agent, TCS, was further shown to inhibit wastewater treatment processes, as well as, denitrification in simulated agricultural conditions after being aged with and spiked into biosolids. In addition, evidence showing potential inhibition of denitrification by TCS in `traditional' biosolids under field conditions was also obtained. Based on these results, this dissertation asserts that biosolids-derived emerging organic contaminants pose a potential risk to agricultural soil microbial ecology and overall soil health. Future studies, however, are needed to examine the impacts of other contaminants that might be flagged with the assay developed in this dissertation under more complex conditions mimicking the environment. Furthermore, other research is needed to examine the role microbial communities play in the bioavailability of emerging contaminants, especially TCS, and a more extensive, in-depth study is needed to characterize the individual impacts of emerging contaminants on soil microbial communities under field conditions.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of this professional report is to more precisely define social media tools and consumer-generated media and consider their effects on advertising campaigns in the digital age. By examining the rather controversial “Motrin Mom” campaign, certain insights arose, including the necessity to embrace the concepts within the micro-targeting of demographics and the testing and measuring of consumer-generated media. / text

<p>Technological advancements in computing have led to a reality where computational devices are more mobile, connected and context aware than ever before. Several of these devices are primarily designed for or support the creation of digital content via built-in or attachable sensors, e.g. mobile phones. The portability and connectivity of mobile devices make them suitable tools to support learning experiences; their features can be used to generate digital content and metadata related to the particular learning situation. These types of objects, referred to as Emerging Learning Objects (ELOs), introduce challenges in terms of metadata enrichment as their metadata should reflect aspects related to the particular learning situation in which they were created to be properly indexed. A claim made in this thesis is that semantic interoperability of ELO metadata is an integral concern that needs to be explored in order to benefit from these metadata outside custom tailored applications and systems. Therefore, the main research question explored in this thesis focuses on the ability to enrich ELOs with semantically interoperable contextual metadata.</p><p>This thesis is comprised of a collection of five peer-reviewed articles that describe interrelated stages of research in pursuit of an answer to the main research question. The overall research process consisted of three main stages: a literature review; the development a system artefact; and the exploration of the technological solution (Linked Data) applied in the system artefact. An instantiation of the Unified Process guided the development of the system artefact.</p><p>The outcomes of these activities provide insights on how to perceive the relationship between context and contextual metadata, as well as properties related to a particular technological solution, namely data distribution, flexibility and expressivity. In order to decouple the findings from a particular instance of technology, a generalization effort in the analysis identified two generic factors that affect the semantic interoperability of metadata: the level of ontological consensus and the level of metadata expressivity. The main conclusion of this thesis is that until the constituent parts of context are agreed upon, metadata expressivity is an important feature for promoting semantic interoperability of ELO contextual metadata.Technological advancements in computing have led to a reality where computational devices are more mobile, connected and context aware than ever before. Several of these devices are primarily designed for or support the creation of digital content via built-in or attachable sensors, e.g. mobile phones. The portability and connectivity of mobile devices make them suitable tools to support learning experiences; their features can be used to generate digital content and metadata related to the particular learning situation. These types of objects, referred to as Emerging Learning Objects (ELOs), introduce challenges in terms of metadata enrichment as their metadata should reflect aspects related to the particular learning situation in which they were created to be properly indexed. A claim made in this thesis is that semantic interoperability of ELO metadata is an integral concern that needs to be explored in order to benefit from these metadata outside custom tailored applications and systems. Therefore, the main research question explored in this thesis focuses on the ability to enrich ELOs with semantically interoperable contextual metadata. This thesis is comprised of a collection of five peer-reviewed articles that describe interrelated stages of research in pursuit of an answer to the main research question. The overall research process consisted of three main stages: a literature review; the development a system artefact; and the exploration of the technological solution (Linked Data) applied in the system artefact. An instantiation of the Unified Process guided the development of the system artefact.The outcomes of these activities provide insights on how to perceive the relationship between context and contextual metadata, as well as properties related to a particular technological solution, namely data distribution, flexibility and expressivity. In order to decouple the findings from a particular instance of technology, a generalization effort in the analysis identified two generic factors that affect the semantic interoperability of metadata: the level of ontological consensus and the level of metadata expressivity. The main conclusion of this thesis is that until the constituent parts of context are agreed upon, metadata expressivity is an important feature for promoting semantic interoperability of ELO contextual metadata.</p>

The necessity to align a multi component null corrector that is used to test the 8.4 [m] off axis parabola segments of the primary mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) initiated this work. Computer Generated Holograms (CGHs) are often a component of these null correctors and their capability to have multiplefunctionality allows them not only to contribute to the measurement wavefront but also support the alignment. The CGH can also be used as an external tool to support the alignment of complex optical systems, although, for the applications shown in this work, the CGH is always a component of the optical system. In general CGHs change the shape of the illuminating wavefront that then can produce optical references. The uncertainty of position of those references not only depends on the uncertainty of position of the CGH with respect to the illuminating wavefront but also on the uncertainty on the shape of the illuminating wavefront. A complete analysis of the uncertainty on the position of the projected references therefore includes the illuminating optical system, that is typically an interferometer. This work provides the relationships needed to calculate the combined propagation of uncertainties on the projected optical references. This includes a geometrical optical description how light carries information of position and how diffraction may alter it. Any optical reference must be transferred to a mechanically tangible quantity for the alignment. The process to obtain the position of spheres relative to the CGH pattern where, the spheres are attached to the CGH, is provided and applied to the GMT null corrector. Knowing the location of the spheres relative to the CGH pattern is equivalent to know the location of the spheres with respect to the wavefront the pattern generates. This work provides various tools for the design and analysis to use CGHs for optical alignment including the statistical foundation that goes with it.

A Computed Tomographic Imaging Spectrometer (CTIS) is an imaging spectrometer which can acquire a hyper-spectral data set in a single snapshot (one focal plane array integration time) with no moving parts. A specially designed dispersing element, which separates light from the three-dimensional object cube into a grid of two-dimensional prismatic diffraction orders, is the key element in the instrument. The capabilities of the CTIS instrument can be improved by employing a more optimized grating design.There were two main goals to this research: (1) to design a novel CTIS disperser that will improve CTIS capabilities over the previous 5x5 disperser and (2) to integrate the new disperser into the CTIS and evaluate its performance compared to the 5x5 disperser. Six new disperser ideas were evaluated based on their performance in a number of computer simulations to determine the most optimal dispersion pattern. A new CTIS disperser incorporating a novel radial design pattern was developed and tested. Reconstruction results of various spatial and spectral targets are presented. Capabilities of the new CTIS instrument incorporating the radial grating are compared to the previous instrument employing a 5x5 disperser. While both dispersers perform similarly for point-source objects, the radial grating performs better than the previous disperser for extended sources.

Faculty of Humanities School of Education 9711890e barbaramichel@absamail.co.za / The focus of this action research study was to facilitate a field generated process to develop guidelines towards standards of practice for peer education. Peer education has been widely used across the globe and often in health oriented fields. In South Africa, peer education practice is marked by the lack of agreed standards and guidelines together with a lack of empirical evidence of its impact on beneficiary groups. The researcher consulted with over 200 individuals who are, in some way, connected or involved in the management of peer education or programmes focussing on youth. The research confirmed the lack of an agreed definition of peer education, the need for guidelines and eventually standards of practice for peer education. There was consensus that peer education was considered a ‘valuable strategy’ despite a chronic lack of reporting, monitoring and clear goals for most programmes. An additional challenge was the lack of evaluation of the benefit of peer education to beneficiaries. Programmes lack underpinning theories, and often are implemented in an attempt to ‘help’ communities in any way possible. Lack of a systemic approach and lack of agreed performance standards, perpetuates peer education interventions that fail due to avoidable challenges that could have been averted with more attention to planning and systematic organisation. The research proposes that with agreed standards and support to implement and build capacity at national and provincial level, peer education could become a flagship for the prevention, care and support to many communities, particularly where there is a chronic lack of resources.

One of the de ning characteristics of the modern Internet is its massive connectedness, with information and human connection simply a few clicks away. Social media and online retailers have revolutionized how we communicate and purchase goods or services. User generated content on the web, through social media, plays a large role in modern society; Twitter has been in the forefront of political discourse, with politicians choosing it as their platform for disseminating information, while websites like Amazon and Yelp allow users to share their opinions on products via online reviews. The information available through these platforms can provide insight into a host of relevant topics through the process of machine learning. Speci - cally, this process involves text mining for sentiment analysis, which is an application domain of machine learning involving the extraction of emotion from text. Unfortunately, there are still those with malicious intent and with the changes to how we communicate and conduct business, comes changes to their malicious practices. Social bots and fake reviews plague the web, providing incorrect information and swaying the opinion of unaware readers. The detection of these false users or posts from reading the text is di cult, if not impossible, for humans. Fortunately, text mining provides us with methods for the detection of harmful user generated content. This dissertation expands the current research in sentiment analysis, fake online review detection and election prediction. We examine cross-domain sentiment analysis using tweets and reviews. Novel techniques combining ensemble and feature selection methods are proposed for the domain of online spam review detection. We investigate the ability for the Twitter platform to predict the United States 2016 presidential election. In addition, we determine how social bots in uence this prediction. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis project seeks to answer the question of how visual rhetoric put forward in social media content by pro-life and pro-choice organizations may persuade their audiences’ perspective on abortion. Using Sonja Foss’s guidelines for analysis of visual rhetoric, I analyze 24 selected examples of Facebook content posted by two pro-life organizations (Human Coalition and Feminists for Life) and two pro-choice organizations (Planned Parenthood Action and NARAL Pro-Choice America) in 2017. My analysis found that the visual rhetoric posted by both organizations on social media can and does function as a form of visual metonymy. Because of this, these visual strategies can stand in for more complex arguments in dramatic ways. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Yam, Shing Chung Jonathan. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-170). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 15, September, 2016). / Yam, Shing Chung Jonathan.