Equipped with advanced field instruments in the past few decades, oceanographers have been able to comprehend some characteristics of the internal waves(IWs), such as the generation, propagation and energy dissipation, as well as to promote understanding in oceanography and marine ecology affected by IWs in the world ocean. Although surface gravity wave and internal wave are two of the most common natural phenomena in the ocean, the interaction between them has not been fully investigated, despite limited theoretical derivations in the literature, nor using laboratory experiments to verify the theory. A series of laboratory experiments were conducted at the National Sun Yen-sen University to study the waveform evolution of continuous IWs propagation on the flat bottom and across a trapezoidal obstacle. Surface waves were generated on a density stratified fluid system in a wave flume, from which IWs were induced indirectly to investigate their wave properties associated with their propagation . The experimental results are then used to determine the maximum depth which could be affected by surface waves in different wave conditions(wave height and period), as well as the amplitude of the IWs induced. The relationship between them are then presented in graphic form. Experiments were also conducted in uniform density and stratified fluid system with a trapezoidal obstacle. The results reveal that (1)long-period surface waves were susceptible to the interaction with the IWs in a stratified system, thus rendering wave height reduction, and (2)short-period surface waves interactions with their IWs counterparts was insignificant, hence yielded wave height similar to that in uniform density fluid system. Moreover, experiments were also conducted to study for long and short period IW propagated over pseudo slope-shelf(using trapezoidal obstacle). The results show that the variation in the IWs significantly affected the strength of internal hydraulic jump and vortices on the front slope and subsequent waveform inversion on the horizontal plateau. For IWs with short period, the horizontal distance on the plateau affected by the IWs was shirter and the total time of wave-topography interaction decreased.

Long-haul optical fiber communication system is an important technology to support the latest broadband communication in the world, and there is strong competition in optical long-haul transmission to achieve high channel bit rates and large transmission capacity. Therefore, it is important to study a technology to improve the performance of such system. As we have already known, return-to-zero differential phase shift keying (RZ-DPSK) is an attractive solution to improve the long distance transmission system performance compared to the conventional on-off keying (OOK) in a 10-Gb/s system, because it has a high nonlinear tolerance. The dispersion flattened fiber (DFF) is attractive for its ability to improve the system performance. Therefore, it is possible to improve the transmission performance by a combination of the RZ-DPSK and the DFF, and one important technology of the current long-haul optical fiber communication system is the dispersion map. And it is widely deployed for already installed undersea optical fiber communication system in the world. A previous study reported that the blockless type dispersion map showed a superior performance than the block type dispersion map, and some efforts to improve the transmission performance of the block type map were conducted. Fundamental idea to improve the transmission performance of the block type map is to reduce the zero crossing points, and one idea is to shift the map toward the positive or the negative cumulative dispersion to reduce the zero crossing points within the map, but it was not so successful. The other idea is to tilt the dispersion map and it was more successful but not good enough. In this master thesis, I continued the study to improve the long-haul RZ-DPSK system performance using the block type dispersion map. One new idea of the dispersion map shifting, the split shifting, was tried, and another new idea of the dispersion map tilting, the split tilting, was examined. The performance with different repeater output power and different compensation scheme within the dispersion map was simulated by a numerical simulator .The goal is, following previous research, to clarify improved dispersion map design of the long-haul RZ-DPSK based transmission and find the effective method to improve the transmission performance. In addition, I also investigate tolerance of the effective area of the transmission fiber theoretically for the long-haul RZ-DPSK system based on the DFF.

The reasons to cause the variation of the Fu-Long resort area have been investigated in the study. The resort area is the spit extended from the northern coast of the Shung-si River located at the northeast part of Taiwan. Historical coastlines and the bathymetry surveyed in the last 15 years have been used to interpret the cause of the coastline variation. Numerical simulation of the wave and flow field is performed to assist the interpretation. It is found that the spit may be eroded during typhoon season by the flood from Shung-si River and recovered in the next year if the typhoon occurred in monsoon season in which the eroded sediment carried by northward monsoon waves will be merged to the coastline by the following southward northeast season waves. On the contrary, if the typhoon occurred during northeast wind season, the accompanying southward will carry the eroded sediment further south and the spit may not recover in the next year. It is further found that the source of the sediment from the river has been decreased in the last decade and the coastline retreated in responding the source decrease. Man-made fishery port close to the spit also deposited some sediment and may cause the variation of the coastline.

Precise positioning is crucial for the success of navigation of underwater vehicles. At present, different instruments and methods are available for underwater positioning but few of them are reliable for three-dimensional position sensing of underwater vehicles. Long baseline (LBL) positioning is the standard method for three-dimensional underwater navigation. However, the accuracy of LBL positioning suffers from its own drawback of relatively low update rates. To improve the accuracy in positioning an underwater vehicle, integration of additional sensing measurements in a LBL navigation system is necessary. In this study, numerical simulation and experiment are conducted to investigate the effect of interrogate rate on the accuracy of LBL positioning. Numerical and experimental results show that the longer the interrogate rate, the greater the LBL positioning error. In addition, no reply from a transponder to transceiver interrogation is another major error source in LBL positioning. The experimental result also shows that the accuracy of LBL positioning can be significantly improved by the integration of velocity sensing. Therefore, based on Kalman filter, this study integrates a LBL system with vehicle dynamic model to improve the accuracy of positioning an underwater vehicle. For conducting the positioning experiments, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with dedicated Graphic User Interface (GUI) is designed, constructed, and tested. To have a precise motion simulation of ROV, a nonlinear dynamic model of ROV with six degrees of freedom (DOF) is used and its hydrodynamic parameters are identified. Finally, the positioning experiment is run by maneuvering the ROV to move along an ¡§S¡¨ trajectory, and Kalman filter is adopted to propagate the error covariance, to update the measurement errors, and to correct the state equation when the measurements of range, depth, and thruster command are available. The experimental result demonstrates the effectiveness of the integrated LBL system with the ROV dynamic model on the improvement of accuracy of positioning an underwater vehicle.

An effective bibliometric analysis based on Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) published by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) was carried out to identify the long-term care research between 1991 and 2008. The objective was to conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis for global trends of long-term care related research. The characteristics related to publications were analyzed. Apparently more and more authors, institutes, and countries engaged in the research over the 18 years. The USA produced the most single country articles and international collaborative articles, followed by Canada and UK. Synthetically analyzing the distribution of paper title, author keyword and keyword plus, it could be concluded that application of long-term care mainly focused on five branches. There are gerontology, psychiatry, health care science, nursing and epidemiology.

This dissertation presents the results of the first search for heavy, neutral, longlived particles that decay to photons at a hadron collider. We use a sample of +jet+missing transverse energy events in p¯p collisions at ps = 1.96 TeV taken with the Collider Detector at Fermilab. Candidate events are selected based on the arrival time of a high-energy photon at the electromagnetic calorimeter as measured with a timing system that was recently installed. The final result is that we find 2 events, using 570±34 pb−1 of data collected during 2004-2005 at the Fermilab Tevatron, consistent with the background estimate of 1.3±0.7 events. While our search strategy does not rely on model-specific dynamics, we interpret this result in terms of cross section limits in a supersymmetric model with e01! eG and set a world-best e01 mass reach of 101 GeV/c2 at e = 5 ns. We can exclude any +jet+missing transverse energy signal that would produce more than 5.5 events.

Discretization and solving of the transport equation has been an area of great research where many methods have been developed. Under the deterministic transport methods, the method of characteristics, MOC, is one such discretization and solution method that has been applied to large-scale problems. Although these MOC, specifically long characteristics, LC, have been thoroughly applied to discretize and solve transport problems in the spatial domain, there is a need for an equally adequate time-dependent discretization. A method has been developed that uses LC discretization of the time and space variables in solving the transport equation. This space-time long characteristic, STLC, method is a discrete ordinates method that applies LC discretization in space and time and employs a least-squares approximation of sources such as the scattering source in each cell. This method encounters the same problems that previous spatial LC methods have dealt with concerning achieving all of the following: particle conservation, exact solution along a ray, and smooth variation in reaction rate for specific problems. However, quantities that preserve conservation in each cell can also be produced with this method and compared to the non-conservative results from this method to determine the extent to which this STLC method addresses the previous problems. Results from several test problems show that this STLC method produces conservative and non-conservative solutions that are very similar for most cases and the difference between them vanishes as track spacing is refined. These quantities are also compared to the results produced from a traditional linear discontinuous spatial discretization with finite difference time discretization. It is found that this STLC method is more accurate for streaming-dominate and scattering-dominate test problems. Also, the solution from this STLC method approaches the steady-state diffusion limit solution from a traditional LD method. Through asymptotic analysis and test problems, this STLC method produces a time-dependent diffusion solution in the thick diffusive limit that is accurate to O(E) and is similar to a continuous linear FEM discretization method in space with time differencing. Application of this method in parallel looks promising, mostly due to the ray independence along which the solution is computed in this method.

This dissertation is a narrative inquiry of the ways in which cultural values, norms, and expectations shape the aging experience of elderly adults living independently in Kasson, a small rural town in southeastern Minnesota, and within Prairie Meadows, Kasson's residential assisted living facility. Despite significant evidence of the reciprocal relationship between community connectedness, successful aging, and healthy communities, we know relatively little about the ways in which contextual meanings of old age influence long-term care and perceptions of well-being in late life. I therefore utilized a variety of interpretive methods, including participant observation, textual analysis, in-depth interviews, and photovoice, to complement and enlarge existing research. Ultimately, I engaged crystallization methodology to co-construct with my participants a multivocal, multigenre text of layered accounts, photographs, stories, and personal reflections. My research design and presentation highlight the inherent possibilities of participatory methods, aesthetic ways of knowing, and asset-based community development for influencing policy and practice at individual, community, and societal levels with typically disenfranchised populations in future communication scholarship. My narrative analysis uncovered three overarching narratives - the "small town" narrative, the "aging in place" narrative, and the "old age" narrative - that guide communicative practices within and between Kasson and Prairie Meadows. Overall, elderly adults in these communities negotiate community connectedness in late life by drawing from or re-storying each of the three narratives. First, they co-construct personal and relational identities through social interactions and shared understandings (e.g., civic engagement, church membership, neighborliness, collective history) of what it means to live in a small town. Second, they face uncertainty (e.g., health and dependency issues) by turning to the past to make sense of the present and future. Third, they embrace old age through membership in age-specific contexts (e.g., Red Hats, senior center, Prairie Meadows) while resisting it in others (e.g., tensions between independence, isolation, and communal life). In total, their stories illuminate the ways in which personal meanings and cultural ideologies support and constrain interactions and decisions in late life as individuals strive for long-term living and a meaningful, supportive place in which to grow old.

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Using Long-Period Fiber Gratings as component of Gain-Flattening filter ofOptical Amplifier, and discuss spectrum of different struture of Long-Period Fiber Gratings. To investigate the spectra characteristics of Long-Period fiber Gratings for designing reference resources. Aiming at different Gain-Flattening filter uses different struture of fiber grating, and the decision of parameter of fiber grating using Genetic Algorithm. Finally delcaring the dataflow of designing filter using Long-Period Fiber Grating and conclusion.In this paper , gain flatttening Cr:YAG optical amplifier spectrum and Erbium-doped optical amplifier spectrum,one achieve 300nm bandwidth and another achieve 40nm.