Edward Said's description of Orientalism as a constitutive element of the modern West is one of the enduring concepts of cultural history. The Orientalism thesis begins with the observation that in the 19th century Westerners began describing the "Orient," particularly the Middle East and India, as a place that was once gloriously civilized but had declined under the influence of incompetent Islamic governments. This construction was then employed to justify Western Imperialism and the expansion of Christianity into Asia. This dissertation examines a case of Orientalism with a twist. Between 1775 and 1830 a group of Anglophone writers and artists depicted Spain as a state with a cultural trajectory similar to that described by the Orientalists. But in the Spanish case, the glorious past was the age of the Islamic Moors who had ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula from 700 until 1492, while the current Christian rulers were the backwards and religiously intolerant impediments to progress. Thus the case of Spanish Orientalism employs an argument structurally identical to Said's Orientalism, with the role of the Christians and Muslims reversed. In examining this phenomenon, I focus on three particular issues. The first is the representation of the Moors in early modern European popular culture. I argue that these earlier traditions use the Moors as an emblematic manifestation of oppositionality to the centralizing state and elite authority. The romantics found in the Moors a symbol comparable to such other proto-Europeans as the Celts and the Goths, worthy predecessors to the warlike, chivalric, and liberty-loving modern Europeans. The second is the political context of Spanish Orientalism. Like "classical" Orientalism, Spanish Orientalism had a clear political payoff. Its articulators meant to show that the Spanish government was an unworthy steward of its rapidly disintegrating empire, thus Spanish Orientalism is closely associated with attempts to assert Anglophone authority in the Caribbean. Third, I examine in detail the work of the author most clearly associated with Spanish Orientalism, Washington Irving. In the four books he wrote while in Spain during the 1820s, Irving became the individual most responsible for reframing the long representational tradition of the Moors into a modern idiom and bringing it to a mass audience.

The thesis looks at developing a new model for a mental health support program which is integrated into a natural recreational environment. Its starting point is Beginning Again, a registered charity in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, which provides a supportive workplace, called Treasures, to engage psychiatric patients in meaningful and productive work. The intent of the thesis is to develop an architecture that reflects the mission and objectives of the program in order to increase the opportunity for recovery and interaction with the local community. This is done by creating a more general prototype or “parent seed” which can be applicable to many locations and then testing the model by planting it in the Oak Ridges Corridor Park, located in the suburban community of Oak Ridges, Ontario. This thesis builds upon the long history of rehabilitative environments to create a community model of care that regards work as primarily a social and cultural activity.

Darbą sudaro trys dalys. Pirmoje dalyje kalbama apie kyžiaus simboliką ir teologiją. Antroje dalyje nagrinėjama Trijų Kryžių kalno istorija ir simbolika. Trečioje dalyje atrasti dalykai lyginami su bendrosiomis ugdymo programomis. / In this research talking about symbol of cross and the Hill of the Three crosses and its use in educational programs of Lithuania.

Modelling of human motion is used in a wide range of applications. An important aspect of accurate representation of human movement is the ability to customize models to account for individual differences. The following work proposes a methodology using Hill-based candidate functions in the Fast Orthogonal Search (FOS) method to predict translational force at the wrist from flexion and extension torque at the elbow. Within this force estimation framework, it is possible to implicitly estimate subject-specific physiological parameters of Hill-based models of upper arm muscles. Surface EMG data from three muscles of the upper arm (biceps brachii, brachioradialis and triceps brachii) were recorded from 10 subjects as they performed isometric contractions at varying elbow joint angles. Estimated muscle activation level and joint kinematic data (joint angle and angular velocity) were utilized as inputs to the FOS model. The resulting wrist force estimations were found to be more accurate for models utilizing Hill-based candidate functions, than models utilizing candidate functions that were not physiologically relevant. Subject-specific estimates of optimal joint angle were determined via frequency analysis of the selected FOS candidate functions. Subject-specific optimal joint angle estimates demonstrated low variability and fell within the range of angles presented in the literature. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2008-10-30 01:32:01.606

Vilniaus Kalnų parkas – tai parkas esantis pačiame Vilniaus miesto centre, šalia tokių svarbių objektų kaip – Gedimino pilies bokštas, Vilniaus Šv. Stanislovo ir Šv. Vladislovo arkikatedra bazilika, Trijų kryžių paminklas, Gedimino paminklas, katedros aikštė. Reikšmingoje vietoje esantis objektas privalo atrodyti solidžiai, būti sutvarkytas bei puoselėjamas. Todėl atliktas tyrimas, kurio tikslas yra įvertinti Vilniaus Kalnų parko želdinių būklę bei numatyti tvarkymo perspektyvas. Tyrimo esmė – nustatyti parko želdinių rūšinę sudėti ir atsitiktinio pasirinkimo metodu ištirti 1000 medžių būklę, kurie atspindėtų viso parko želdinių būklę. Daugiausia išmatuota paprastojo klevo, paprastosios pušies ir baltosios tuopos želdinių. Šios rūšys sudaro daugiau nei pusę tirtų želdinių skaičiaus. Tyrimo metu buvo ištirta 17 medžių rūšių: specialiomis priemonėmis buvo matuojamas medžių aukštis, liemens apimtis, liemens tiesumas, fiksuojamos ligos, įvairūs mechaniniai pažeidimai. Tyrimo rezultatai surašomi į lentelės ir statistiškai apdorojami. Siekiant patvirtinti, kad tyrimo rezultatai yra objektyvūs, atliekamas palyginimas su VPVKRD saugomais dokumentais. Daroma išvada, kad tyrimo metu surinkti duomenys, skaičiai ir kiti pastebėjimai yra artimi VPVKRD dokumentų duomenims. Todėl tyrimą galima laikyti objektyviai atspindinčiu Kalnų parko želdinių sudėtį ir būklę. Siekiant pagerinti parko ir jo želdinių būklę siūloma sutvarkyti infrastruktūrą, įrengti pasivaikščiojimų takus, suolus... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Vilnius Hill Park is situated right in the centre of Vilnius city near such important sites as – The Castle of Gediminas monument, Cathedral Square. Due to its‘ important location the site has to look presentable, tidy ant cherished. Due to this, research was carried out to in order to establish conditiom of plantation in Vilnius Hill Park anh review the options. The essence of this the research is was follows – identyfi park plantation types strength and by randomly selecting of 1000 trees, which could highlight condition of the whole planting and examine their condition. The main examination was carried out on maple, ordinary pine and white poplar. These types make up more than half of examined plantation numbers. During the testing 17 types of treles were examined as follows: height was measured by special equipment, stem size, stem erectness, fixate condition, various mechanical violation. Tests results are recordered on a card and statistically processed. To make sure, that research results are impartial, they are compared to VPVKRD protected documents. Conclusion can be made, that data collected during the research and other findings can be related to VPVKRD documents data. This is why the research can be classed as impartial, showing the true condition of park planting. The following actions can done in order to improve park and planting condition: walking paths can be created; benches and bins can be installed; flower garden can be created.

Geomorphological and paleoseismic studies provide insight into the fault geometry and kinematics of a series of dextral northeast striking faults, including the Porters Pass, Hawdon, Bullock Hill, and Esk faults, in the South Island of New Zealand. These faults show post-glacial offsets that are significantly larger than predicted from co-seismic displacement - surface rupture length regressions derived from empirical relationships. Geomorphological mapping reveals slip rates as high as 9 mm/year for the Hawdon fault and Bullock Hill fault over an expected fault length of c. 140 km. Surface expressions of some parts of the studied faults are obscured by glacial gravels, indicating that blind faults are present in parts of the Sourthern Alps and may be the source for a component of a reported slip deficit in North Canterbury. Concluding from comparing scaling relationship results for the individual faults I hypothesize that the Porters Pass, Hawdon, Bullock Hill and Esk faults are segments of an incipient fault system that stretches from the western tip of the Porters Pass fault to the Hope fault, east of Hanmer Springs. Considering the location, similar strike and dextral deformation mode, I suggest that this 140 km long dextral strike-slip fault system marks the southernmost extension of the Marlborough Fault System resulting from the ongoing southward propagation of the Pacific-Australian plate boundary in New Zealand's South Island.

Bedrock geology of the Winchendon quadrangle is divided into two zones based on structures and lithology. The eastern zone consists of tightly folded Silurian Rangeley and Paxton metasediments and pegmatites. Planar, NNE-SSW striking, W dipping foliations are characterized by alternating phyllosilicate-rich and leucosome layers. Fold axes of tight to isoclinal upright and recumbent folding are parallel to SSW-NNE shallowly plunging sillimanite, quartz and muscovite lineations. In the western zone Rangeley schists were intruded by Devonian Hardwick and Coys Hill and Fitzwilliam plutons. Planar NNE-SSW striking foliations dip shallowly to steeply west. Fold axes of tight-to-isoclinal asymmetric to recumbent folds plunge shallowly to steeply SSW, parallel to elongate quartz and feldspar lineations. Fabrics in both portions developed in by greenschist facies mineral assemblages Asymmetric porphyroclasts and S-C/C’ fabrics from both areas display dextral asymmetry. Lateral extrusion as the result of pure-shear dominated E-W shortening and N-S extension is recorded by structures that exhibit strong contractional strains, accompanied by stretching fabrics. A 2-3 kilometer wide belt of deformation named the Bronson Hill-Central Maine Boundary Zone (BHCMBZ) correlates with the Conant Brook Shear Zone. This creates a zone of deformation that widens to the north and separates Ordovician plutons of the Bronson Hill zone from units of the Central Maine zone. North of Winchendon, retrograde deformation is absent and Acadian metamorphism and structures are preserved. This creates an inconsistency in along-strike deformation the length of the inferred terrane boundary. A larger terrane, composed of the Bronson Hill and Central Maine zones is proposed to account for the discontinuous deformation along strike.

For 141 years, The Ryerson Press was both a cultural engine for and a reflection of Canadian society. Founded in 1829 as the Methodist Book Room, it was Canada’s first English-language book publisher and became the largest textbook publisher in Canada. Its contributions to Canadian literature, particularly under long-time editor Lorne Pierce, were considerable. In 1970, however, the press was sold to American branch plant McGraw-Hill, causing a cultural and nationalist crisis in the publishing community. The purpose of this thesis is to explanation many of the factors causing the United Church to sell the House. The purchase of an expensive and outdated printing press in 1962 has been blamed for the sale, as has the general state of Canadian publishing at the time. However, the whole story is much more complex and includes publication choices, personnel shifts, management failures, financial ruin, organizational politics, inflation, and the massive cultural shift of the late 1960s. Specifically, the thesis looks at the succession crisis that followed Lorne Pierce’s retirement, the Woods, Gordon Management Report, the New Curriculum, The United Church Observer, the practice of hiring ministers as managers, the formation of the Division of Communication, the proposed merger of the United Church of Canada with the Anglican Church of Canada, and falling church membership.

In this thesis, we investigate Sturmian comparison theory and oscillation for second order impulsive differential equations with fixed moments of impulse actions. It is shown that impulse actions may greatly alter the oscillation behavior of solutions. In chapter two, besides Sturmian type comparison results, we give Leightonian type comparison theorems and obtain Wirtinger type inequalities for linear, half-linear and non-selfadjoint equations. We present analogous results for forced super linear and super half-linear equations with damping. In chapter three, we derive sufficient conditions for oscillation of nonlinear equations. Integral averaging, function averaging techniques as well as interval criteria for oscillation are discussed. Oscillation criteria for solutions of impulsive Hill&amp / #8217 / s equation with damping and forced linear equations with damping are established.

The research presented in this thesis investigates the performance of some well-known heuristic algorithms on graph decomposition problems. First, a genetic algorithm is introduced and some modifications are trialled on finding Steiner triple systems (STS) of small orders. The results show that traditional genetic algorithms are not well suited to finding graph decompositions. Then a hill climbing optimisation technique is presented and investigated in the context of cycle decompositions. Such searches have previously proved to be effective at finding STSs. However, the general hill climbing approach is not immediately applicable to decompositions into cycles of length larger than 3. A modification of the hill climbing algorithm for cycles, called slippery hill climbing, is introduced and tested on decompositions of graphs into cycles of small lengths larger than 3. Slippery hill climbing successfully decomposed complete and dense non-complete graphs of considerable sizes into cycles of small lengths. In addition, we applied the slippery hill climbing approach to completing partial latin squares. It is reasonably expected that the algorithms developed in this study will also be applicable to other related problems in combinatorics and graph theory.