Nonlinear site response analyses are generally preferred over equivalent linear analyses for soft soil sites subjected to high-intensity input ground motions. However, both nonlinear and equivalent linear analyses often result in large induced shear strains (3-10%) at soft sites, and these large strains may generate unusual characteristics in the predicted surface ground motions. One source of the overestimated shear strains may be attributed to unrealistically low shear strengths implied by commonly used modulus reduction curves. Therefore, modulus reduction and damping curves can be modified at shear strains greater than 0.1% to provide a more realistic soil model for site response. However, even after these modifications, nonlinear and equivalent linear site response analyses still may generate unusual surface acceleration time histories and Fourier amplitude spectra at soft soil sites when subjected to high-intensity input ground motions. As part of this work, equivalent linear and nonlinear 1D site response analyses for the well-known Treasure Island site demonstrate the challenges associated with accurately modeling large shear strains, and subsequent surface response, at soft soil sites. Accounting for the uncertainties associated with the shear wave velocity profile is an important part of a properly executed site response analyses. Surface wave data from Grenoble, France and Mirandola, Italy have been used to determine shear wave velocity (Vs) profiles from inversion of surface wave data. Furthermore, Vs profiles from inversion have been used to determine boundary, median and statistically-based randomly generated profiles. The theoretical dispersion curves from the inversion analyses as well as the boundary, median and randomly generated Vs profiles are compared with experimentally measured surface wave data. It is found that the median theoretical dispersion curve provides a satisfactory fit to the experimental data, but the boundary type theoretical dispersion curves do not. Randomly generated profiles result in some theoretical dispersion curves that fit the experimental data, and many that do not. Site response analyses revealed that the greater variability in the response spectra and amplification factors were determined from the randomly generated Vs profiles than the inversion or boundary Vs profiles.

Polymer-based electro-optical modulators are, generally, applicable to many fields but their applications to analog optical links and silicon photonic integrated circuits are specifically emphasized in this dissertation. This dissertation aims to improve the linearity characteristics of polymer-based electro-optic modulators for their practical application in high speed analog optical links. Domain-inversion technique is employed to linearize a two-section Y-fed directional coupler modulator. The spurious free dynamic range as high as 119dB/Hz2/3 has been demonstrated with 11dB enhancement over the conventional Mach-Zehnder modulator at low frequency. For high speed modulation, a traveling wave electrode with low RF loss and large bandwidth is designed and installed in a linearized Y-fed directional coupler modulator. The spurious free dynamic range has been measured in the range of 110±3dB/Hz2/3 at 2~8GHz frequency. For digital application of polymer-based electro-optic modulators, a hybrid silicon photonic crystal waveguide modulator was investigated with focus on size-reduction and electro-optic efficiency enhancement. The slow group velocity of photonic crystal waveguides promises two orders of magnitude size-reduction in device footprint compared with the conventional strip waveguide. Infiltration of an electro-optic polymer into the slot waveguide can infuse silicon with nonlinear optical properties. To actualize these benefits of a hybrid silicon photonic crystal waveguide modulator, nano-fabrication process was developed and optimized in this work. / text

Anthropomorphism is a common phenomenon when people attribute human characteristics to non-human objects. It plays an important role in acceptance of robots in natural human environments. Various studies in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) show that there are various factors that can affect the extent to which a robot is anthropomorphized. However, our knowledge of this phenomenon is segmented, as there is a lack of a coherent model of anthropomorphism that could consistently explain these findings. A robot should be able to adjust its level of anthropomorphism to a level that can optimize its task performance. In order to do that, robotic system designers must know which characteristics affect the perception of robots' anthropomorphism. Currently, existing models of anthropomorphism emphasize the importance of the context and perceiver in this phenomenon, but provide little guidelines regarding the factors of a perceived object that are affecting it. The proposed reverse process to anthropomorphization is known as dehumanization. In the recent years research in social psychology has found which characteristics are deprived from people who are perceived as subhumans or are objectified. Furthermore, the process of dehumanization is two dimensional rather than unidimensional. This thesis discusses a model of anthropomorphism that uses characteristics from both dimensions of dehumanization and those relating to robots' physical appearance to affect the anthropomorphism of a robot. Furthermore, involvement of implicit and explicit processes in anthropomorphization are discussed. In this thesis I present five empirical studies that were conducted to explore anthropomorphism in HRI. Chapter 3 discusses development and validation of a cognitive measurement of humanlikeness using the magnitude of the inversion effect. Although robot stimuli were processed more similarly to human stimuli rather than objects and induced the inversion effect, the results suggest that this measure has limited potential for measuring humanlikeness due to the low variance that it can explain. The second experiment, presented in Chapter 4 explored the involvement of Type I and Type II processing in anthropomorphism. The main findings of this study suggest that anthropomorphism is not a result of a dual-process and self-reports have a potential to be suitable measurement tools of anthropomorphism. Chapter 5 presents the first empirical work on the dimensionality of anthropomorphism. Only perceived emotionality of a robot, but not its perceived intelligence, affects its anthropomorphization. This finding is further supported by a follow up experiment, presented in Chapter 6, that shows that Human Uniqueness dimension is less relevant for a robot's anthropomorphiazability than Human Nature (HN) dimension. Intentionality of a robot did not result in its higher anthropomorphizability. Furthermore, this experiment showed that humanlike appearance of a robot is not linearly related with its anthropomorphism during HRI. The lack of linear relationship between humanlike appearance and attribution of HN traits to a robot during HRI is further supported by the study described in Chapter 7. This last experiment shows also that another factor of HN, sociability, affects the extent to which a robot is anthropomorphized and therefore the relevance of HN dimension in the process of anthropomorphization. This thesis elaborates on the process of anthropomorphism as an important factor affecting HRI. Without fully understanding the process itself and what factors make robots to be anthropomorphized it is hard to measure the impact of anthropomorphism on HRI. It is hoped that understanding anthropomorphism in HRI will make it possible to design interactions in a way that optimizes the benefits of that phenomenon for an interaction.

We propose an efficient iterative curvelet-regularized deconvolution algorithm that exploits continuity along reflectors in seismic images. Curvelets are a new multiscale transform that provides sparse representations for images (such as seismic images) that comprise smooth objects separated by piece-wise smooth discontinuities. Our technique combines conjugate gradient-based convolution operator inversion with noise regularization that is performed using non-linear curvelet coefficient shrinkage (thresholding). The shrinkage operation leverages the sparsity of curvelets representations. Simulations demonstrate that our algorithm provides improved resolution compared to the traditional Wiener-based deconvolution approach.

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The relationship between extractable invertase activities and sucrose accumulation in the sugarcane (Saccharum spp. hybrids) culm and in vivo invertase mediated sucrose hydrolysis was investigated to determine the significance of invertases in sucrose utilisation and turnover. In vitro activities were determined by assaying the soluble acid invertase (SAI), cell wall bound acid invertase (CWA) and neutral invertase (NI) from internodes three to ten in mature sugarcane plants of cultivar NCo376. Extractable activities were verified by immunoblotting. In vivo invertase mediated sucrose hydrolysis was investigated in tissue discs prepared from mature culm tissue of the same cultivar. Sugarcane NI had a higher specific activity than SAI (apoplastic and vacuolar) in the sucrose accumulating region of the sugarcane culm. CWA was also present in significant quantities in both immature and mature tissue. Sugarcane NI was partially purified from mature sugarcane culm tissue to remove any potential competing activity. The enzyme is non-glycosylated and exhibits catalytic activity as a monomer, dimer and tetramer. Most of the activity elutes as a monomer of native Mr ca 60 kDa. The enzyme displays typical hyperbolic saturation kinetics for sucrose hydrolysis. It has a Km of 9.8 mM for sucrose and a pH optimum of 7.2. An Arrhenius plot shows the energy of activation of the enzyme for sucrose to be 62.5 kJ.mol-1 below 30°C and -11.6 kJ.mol-1 above 30°C. Sugarcane NI is inhibited by its products, with fructose being a more effective inhibitor than glucose. Sugarcane NI is significantly inhibited by HgCI2, AgNO-3, ZnCI2, CuSO4 and CoCI2 but not by CaCI2, MgCI2 or MnCI2. Sugarcane NI showed no significant hydrolysis of cellobiose or trehalose. When radiolabelled fructose was fed to sugarcane internodal tissue, label appeared in glucose which demonstrates that invertase mediated hydrolysis of sucrose occurs. A combination of continuous feeding and pulse chase experiments was used to investigate the in vivo contribution of the invertases and the compartmentation of sugars. Sucrose is synthesised at a rate greater than the rate of breakdown at all stages of maturity in sugarcane culm tissue. The turnover time of the total cytosolic label pool is longer for internode three than internode six. A higher vacuolar:cytosolic sugar molar ratio than previously assumed is indicated. Developmentally, the greatest change in carbon allocation occurs from internodes three to six. The main competing pools are the insoluble and neutral fractions. As the tissue matures, less carbon is allocated to the insoluble and more to the neutral fraction. The neutral fraction consists mainly of sucrose, glucose and fructose. The compartmented nature of sugarcane storage parenchyma carbohydrate metabolism results in a system that is complex and difficult to investigate. A computer based metabolic flux model was developed to aid in the interpretation of timecourse labelling studies. A significant obstacle was the global optimization of the model, while maintaining physiologically meaningful flux parameters. Once the vacuolar:cytosolic molar ratio was increased, the model was able to describe the internode three and six labelling profiles. The model results were in agreement with experimental observation. An increase in the rate of sucrose accumulation was observed with tissue maturation. Only the internode three glucokinase activity was greater than the experimentally determined limit. The rate was however physiologically feasible and may reflect the underestimation of the in vivo rate. SAI and NI contributed to sucrose hydrolysis in internode three but not in internode six. The rates in internode six were set to fixed low values to enable the model to fit the experimental data. This does not however preclude low levels of in vivo SAI and NI activity, which would prove significant over a longer time period. The flow of label through the individual pools, which comprise the experimentally measured composite pools could be observed. This provides insight into the sucrose moiety label ratio, SPS:SuSy sucrose synthesis ratio, and the rate of 14CO2 release. The model provides a framework for the investigation and interpretation of timecourse labelling studies of sugarcane storage parenchyma. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

We consider the problem of synthesizing program inverses for imperative languages. Our primary motivation comes from optimistic parallel discrete event simulation (OPDES). There, a simulator must process events while respecting logical temporal event-ordering constraints; to extract parallelism, an OPDES simulator may speculatively execute events and only rollback execution when event-ordering violations occur. In this context, the ability to perform rollback by running time- and space-efficient reverse programs, rather than saving and restoring large amounts of state, can make OPDES more practical. Synthesizing inverses also appears in numerous other software engineering contexts, such as debugging, synthesizing “undo” code, or even generating decompressors automatically given only lossless compression code. This thesis mainly contains three chapters. In the first chapter, we focus on handling programs with only scalar data and arbitrary control flows. By building a value search graph (VSG) that represents recoverability relationships between variable values, we turn the problem of recovering previous values into a graph search one. Forward and reverse programs are generated according to the search results. For any loop that produces an output state given a particular input state, our method can synthesize an inverse loop that reconstructs the input state given the original loop's output state. The synthesis process consists of two major components: (a) building the inverse loop's body, and (b) building the inverse loop's predicate. Our method works for all natural loops, including those that take early exits (e.g., via breaks, gotos, returns). In the second chapter we extend our method to handling programs containing arrays. Based on Array SSA, we develop a modified Array SSA from which we could easily build equalities between arrays and array elements. Specifically, to represent the equality between two arrays, we employ the array subregion as the constraint. During the search those subregions will be calculated to guarantee that all array elements will be retrieved. We also develop a demand-driven method to retrieve array elements from a loop, in which each time we only try to retrieve an array element from an iteration if that element has not been modified in previous iterations. To ensure the correctness of each retrieval, the boundary conditions are created and checked at the entry and the exit of the loop. In the last chapter, we introduce several techniques of handling high-level constructs of C++ programs, including virtual functions, copying C++ objects, C++ STL containers, C++ source code normalization, inter-procedural function calls, etc. Since C++ is an object-oriented (OO) language, our discussion in this chapter can also be extended to other OO languages like Java.

Falkenberg area is located in southwest Sweden formed in the Sveconorwegian orogen and contains an extremely complex geological structure. Multiple geophysical datasets have been acquired and together with available petrophysical information, models corresponding to the subsurface geological structures were generated. The collected data comprise ground magnetic, AMT (Audio Magnetotelluric) and RMT (Radio Magnetotelluric) data. The available airborne magnetic and ground gravity data acquired by the Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) as well as the reflection seismic section from a study made by Uppsala University further aids in obtaining substantially improved interpretation of the geometry of the structures along the AMT profile. The principal objective of this profile was to delineate and map the possible deformation zone crossed by the profile. The AMT study was expected to complement existing geophysical data and improve existing interpretations. The Ullared deformation zone contains decompressed eclogite facies rocks. The presented results were obtained by comparison of different geophysical methods along the profile. The susceptibility model and resistivity model show that eclogites have higher resistivity and susceptibility than the surrounding structures. However use of the Occam type of inversion on the AMT data, makes the resistivity model smoother than the susceptibility model and as a results it is difficult to estimate the dip of the structures. The AMT profile and the seismic section show the same dip direction (NE) for the eclogite bearing structures although due to the smoothing in the AMT model the dips seen in the seismic section cannot be recovered in the resistivity model.

Syfte: Att med hjälp av videoanalys och programvaran Dartfish, undersöka eventuella skillnader i stödfasen på vinkeln mellan calcaneus och underlaget, hos personer med Pes planus och pes cavus, både efter en- och 45 minuters löpning på löpband.  Studiedesign: En experimentell studie. Metod: Trettiofyra personer vars fot/fötter uppmättes till pes cavus och pes planus enligt kriterierna för Medial Longitudinale Arch -angle, inkluderades i studien. Mätningarna gjordes på en stillbild med digital goniometer i programvaran Dartfish. Därefter mättes calcaneus vertikala mittlinje i förhållande till underlaget i stödfasen både efter 1 minut och 45 minuter, när försökspersonerna sprang barfota på ett löpband. Resultat: Båda fotvalvsgrupperna visade ett signifikant lägre värde, d vs ökad valgusriktning av calcaneus till underlaget, efter 45 minuter jämfört med 1 minuts löpning (p<0.05). Konklusion: Både pes cavus och pes planus tenderar att inta en calcaneusställning mer åt valgus efter 45 minuters löpning. Det behövs fortsatt forskning för att klargöra förändringen av biomekaniken efter längre tids löpning. Studiens resultat antyder att framtida studier som undersöker sambandet mellan skador och abnormala fotrörelser under belastning  även bör undersöka efter längre tids löpning.