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The title- "James Hog of Carnock (1658-1734), Leader in the Evangelical Party in Early Eighteenth Century Scotland" -has been the limiting factor in the development and scope of this thesis. It is not without significance that Hog is described as "Leader in the Evangelical Party": the claim is not that he was the leader of that school; but he is presented herein as one of the leaders in the Evangelical party. This means that the share of Thomas Boston, the Erskines, and others of that group in Evangelical leadership is by no means denied, but it is not the scope of this thesis to give an exhaustive study of these particular men, of their party, or even of the various controversies herein discussed. Their contributions are for the most part not included in the thesis, or are included only insofar as is necessary to establish Hog's function in the various scenes, to balance the discussion, or to throw light upon the overall picture. In other words, the various subjects presented in the thesis are developed as James Hog impinged upon them, or as they impinged upon James Hog. The words "Evangelical Party" are intended to apply in a broad way, for it is an accepted fact that there was, during the period under consideration, no hard and fast Evangelical--as opposed to Moderate--party. It was more properly an Evangelical school and as such the words are understood and developed. It is the early eighteenth century with which the thesis is concerned primarily, but as it is impossible to plunge into the current of events and thought in ecclesiastical and theological studies without a retrospective presentation of the contextual situation preceding the immediate problem, an introductory section, rooted in the seventeenth century background, is placed at the beginning of each chapter. The decision to take this approach was taken after consultation with my principal adviser, Principal Emeritus Hugh Watt, whose wise counsel has led the writer clear of many Charybdian hazards. In thus presenting the introductory sections, each chapter serves as a setting for that which follows, climaxing in the crucial chapter on the controversy concerning The Marrow of Modern Divinity.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Kevin Dhuyvetter / Establishing a cross border swine production system is the focus of this thesis. There are three basic sections to this project: 1) the business plan information 2) the study of economic principles and the state of the industry, and 3) the implementation of starting the business. First the project develops a basic business plan for Great Lakes Pork, and then uses economic theories to evaluate business opportunities. The project incorporates basic business plan information such as establishing a business philosophy, which includes company goals and objectives. The process involved the creation of specific business entities and the analysis of different corporate structures: Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), Sub S Corporation, and Class C Corporation. Through this process of establishing this cross border swine production company the Partnership and Cooperative business structures are also evaluated and formed. Great Lakes Pork, Inc was incorporated in Michigan as a Sub S corporation. Economies of size and scale are used as the background for developing this business entity. The Cobweb model is used to help understand and explain the existence of a hog cycle and the ramifications this has for Great Lakes Pork, Inc. These economic principles are applied to current North American data to determine an entry point and to predict the best time to enter the swine industry. A study of the United States-Canada exchange rate is required to understand the dynamics of establishing a swine production company that crosses an international border. The study discusses global issues and possible threats that exist to an international corporation. Finally the implementation phase used models to estimate asset values and incorporated tax planning methods to determine the final corporate structure. The implementation phase includes pro-forma financial statements that were used to secure financing. The implementation phase also included renegotiating supplier contracts based on the data learned during the state of the industry analysis to establish a cost of production that could be profitable for the businesses going forward. The end result is an example of the process used to establish a cross border swine production company.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of the Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) as descriptors for traffic signs recognition. The test dataset consists of speed limit traffic signs because of their high inter-class similarities.   HOG features of speed limit signs, which were extracted from different traffic scenes, were computed and a Gentle AdaBoost classifier was invoked to evaluate the different features. The performance of HOG was tested with a dataset consisting of 1727 Swedish speed signs images. Different numbers of HOG features per descriptor, ranging from 36 features up 396 features, were computed for each traffic sign in the benchmark testing. The results show that HOG features perform high classification rate as the Gentle AdaBoost classification rate was 99.42%, and they are suitable to real time traffic sign recognition. However, it is found that changing the number of orientation bins has insignificant effect on the classification rate. In addition to this, HOG descriptors are not robust with respect to sign orientation.

In a time when cattle herds grow continually larger the need for automatic methods to detect diseases is ever increasing. One possible method to discover diseases is to use thermal images and automatic head and eye detectors. In this thesis an eye detector and a head detector is implemented using the Random Forests classifier. During the implementation the classifier is evaluated using three different descriptors: Histogram of Oriented Gradients, Local Binary Patterns, and a descriptor based on pixel differences. An alternative classifier, the Support Vector Machine, is also evaluated for comparison against Random Forests. The thesis results show that Histogram of Oriented Gradients performs well as a description of cattle heads, while Local Binary Patterns performs well as a description of cattle eyes. The provided descriptor performs almost equally well in both cases. The results also show that Random Forests performs approximately as good as the Support Vector Machine, when the Support Vector Machine is paired with Local Binary Patterns for both heads and eyes. Finally the thesis results indicate that it is easier to detect and locate cattle heads than it is to detect and locate cattle eyes. For eyes, combining a head detector and an eye detector is shown to give a better result than only using an eye detector. In this combination heads are first detected in images, followed by using the eye detector in areas classified as heads.

published_or_final_version / Zoology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Zoology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Submitted by Luiz Felipe Barbosa (luiz.fbabreu2@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-13T13:23:37Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Tese - Rodrigo Mendonça de Lucena.pdf: 1925141 bytes, checksum: ad20740a309b4280513e7c3cc2a874b1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-13T13:23:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Tese - Rodrigo Mendonça de Lucena.pdf: 1925141 bytes, checksum: ad20740a309b4280513e7c3cc2a874b1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / FACEPE / Células de S. cerevisiae são submetidas a diferentes tipos de estresse durante o processo fermentativo para a produção de álcool combustível. No Brasil, este processo ocorre com reciclos celulares intercalados por etapas de pré-fermentação que inclui, entre outros procedimentos, o tratamento com ácido sulfúrico diluído para controle da população bacteriana. Este tratamento conduz a perda da viabilidade celular, com conseqüências no rendimento fermentativo. Considerando estes fatos, o presente trabalho tem o propósito de identificar a resposta genética e metabólica de S. cerevisiae ao estresse ácido, e revelar os mecanismos que conduzem a tolerância e adaptação celular. Foi realizada a triagem de mutantes com deleções crescendo em meio com pH neutro e ácido, onde foram comparados com a linhagem selvagem, assim como também foi avaliada a expressão gênica global e específica para genes envolvidos em diferentes via metabólicas. Os resultados mostraram que a via de Integridade da Parede Celular é o principal mecanismo responsável pela tolerância celular ao pH ácido, onde este dano ativa a via da proteína quinase C (PKC) principalmente pelo sensor de membrana Wsc1p. Adicionalmente, danos a parede celular podem mimetizar o efeito do choque hiperosmótico e ativar a via HOG, a qual amplifica o sinal da via PKC e induz a ativação dos canais de Ca2+ pelo aumento da expressão do gene SLT2, promovendo o influxo de cálcio que ativará a calcineurina. Juntos, estes mecanismos conduzem a mudanças na expressão de genes envolvidos com a regeneração da parede celular, metabolismo de carboidratos, resposta a feromônios e regulação do ciclo celular.

Submitted by Caroline Falcao (caroline.rfalcao@ufpe.br) on 2017-04-10T17:50:09Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) 2012-Tese-RodrigoLucena.pdf: 1924564 bytes, checksum: 5c075accad4cf839a0292842848e65e3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-10T17:50:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) 2012-Tese-RodrigoLucena.pdf: 1924564 bytes, checksum: 5c075accad4cf839a0292842848e65e3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Células de S. cerevisiae são submetidas a diferentes tipos de estresse durante o processo fermentativo para a produção de álcool combustível. No Brasil, este processo ocorre com reciclos celulares intercalados por etapas de pré-fermentação que inclui, entre outros procedimentos, o tratamento com ácido sulfúrico diluído para controle da população bacteriana. Este tratamento conduz a perda da viabilidade celular, com conseqüências no rendimento fermentativo. Considerando estes fatos, o presente trabalho tem o propósito de identificar a resposta genética e metabólica de S. cerevisiae ao estresse ácido, e revelar os mecanismos que conduzem a tolerância e adaptação celular. Foi realizada a triagem de mutantes com deleções crescendo em meio com pH neutro e ácido, onde foram comparados com a linhagem selvagem, assim como também foi avaliada a expressão gênica global e específica para genes envolvidos em diferentes via metabólicas. Os resultados mostraram que a via de Integridade da Parede Celular é o principal mecanismo responsável pela tolerância celular ao pH ácido, onde este dano ativa a via da proteína quinase C (PKC) principalmente pelo sensor de membrana Wsc1p. Adicionalmente, danos a parede celular podem mimetizar o efeito do choque hiperosmótico e ativar a via HOG, a qual amplifica o sinal da via PKC e induz a ativação dos canais de Ca2+ pelo aumento da expressão do gene SLT2, promovendo o influxo de cálcio que ativará a calcineurina. Juntos, estes mecanismos conduzem a mudanças na expressão de genes envolvidos com a regeneração da parede celular, metabolismo de carboidratos, resposta a feromônios e regulação do ciclo celular. / S. cerevisiae cells are subjected to different sorts of stress during the fermentation process for the fuel alcohol production. In Brazil, this process occurs using cell recyclings interspersed with steps of pre-fermentation which includes, among other procedures, treatment with dilute sulfuric acid to control of the bacterial population. This treatment leads to loss of cell viability, with consequences on yield fermentation. Considering these facts, the present study aims to identify the genetic and metabolic response of S. cerevisiae during acid stress, and reveal the mechanisms leading to tolerance and cellular adaptation. Screening was performed with deletion mutants grown in media with neutral and acid pH, which were compared with the wild strain, as well as also was evaluated the global and specififies gene expression to genes involved in different metabolic pathway. The results showed that the Cell Wall Integrity pathway is the main mechanism responsible for cellular tolerance to acid pH, where the damage activates the protein kinase C (PKC) mainly by Wsc1p membrane sensor. In addition, cell wall injury might mimic the effects of high osmotic shock and activates the HOG pathway, which amplifies the signal in the upper part of PKC pathway and leads to the activation of Ca2+ channels by SLT2 overexpression and this Ca2+ influx further activates calcineurin.Together, these mechanisms induce the expression of genes involved in cell wall regeneration, mating, carbohydrate metabolism and cell cycle regulation.

Road traffic signs provide instructions, warning information, to regulate driver behavior. In addition, these signs provide a reliable guarantee for safe and convenient driving. The Traffic Sign Detection and Recognition (TSDR) system is one of the primary applications for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). TSDR has obtained a great deal of attention over the recent years. But, it is still a challenging field of image processing. In this thesis, we first created our own dataset for North American Traffic Signs, which is still being updated. We then decided to choose Histogram Orientation Gradients (HOG) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) to build our system after comparing them with some other techniques. For better results, we tested different HOG parameters to find the best combination. After this, we developed a TSDR system using HOG, SVM and our new color information extraction algorithm. To reduce time-consumption, we used the Maximally Stable Extremal Region (MSER) to replace the HOG and SVM detection stage. In addition, we developed a new approach based on Global Positioning System (GPS) information other than image processing. At last, we tested these three systems; the results show that all of them can recognize traffic signs with a good accuracy rate. The MSER based system is faster than the one using only HOG and SVM; and, the GPS based system is even faster than the MSER based system.