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Prior observations by Koch (2005) suggest the presence of soil water mixed with current rainfall in runoff samples at the Kendall subwatershed of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW). However, previous observations elsewhere in the WGEW have shown runoff to consist mainly of current precipitation (Goodrich et al., 2004). The disparity between the two studies demonstrates a need for continued research; therefore, this study uses isotope and solute geochemical tracers to determine the sources contributing to runoff at the Lucky Hills subwatershed of the WGEW during the 2015 monsoon season. A comparison of the stable isotopes of water (2H and 18O) in runoff to those in precipitation and soil water, shows that runoff and precipitation are distinct (p < 0.05), while soil water cannot be differentiated from runoff (p > 0.05). However, graphical representations of chloride and sulfate concentrations in the three water sources (precipitation, soil water and runoff), conclusively reveal that there is negligible soil water present in the runoff at Lucky Hills. Therefore, it is likely that there is no soil water mixing into the runoff at the Lucky Hills subwatershed, but more research is necessary to confirm these results. Because no runoff or soil water data was generated at the Kendall subwatershed during the 2015 monsoon season, continued research is necessary to draw conclusions about the sources contributing to runoff in the Kendall subwatershed, and in other portions of the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed.

Chordal graphs are an important class of perfect graphs. The beautiful theory surrounding their study varies from natural applications to elegant characterizations in terms of forbidden subgraphs, subtree representations, vertex orderings, and to linear time recognition algorithms. Haskins and Rose introduced the class of chordal digraphs as a digraph analogue of chordal graphs. Chordal digraphs can be defined in terms of vertex orderings and several results about chordal graphs can be extended to chordal digraphs. However, a forbidden subdigraph characterization of chordal digraphs is not known and finding such a characterization seems to be a difficult problem. Meister and Telle studied semi-complete chordal digraphs and gave a forbidden subdigraph characterization of this class of digraphs. In this thesis, we study chordal digraphs within the classes of quasi-transitive, extended semi-complete, and locally semi-complete digraphs. For each of these classes we obtain a forbidden subdigraph characterization of digraphs which are chordal. We also introduce in this thesis a new variant of chordal digraphs called semi-strict chordal digraphs. We obtain a forbidden subdigraph characterization of semi-strict chordal digraphs for each of the classes of semi-complete, quasi-transitive, extended semi-complete, and locally semi-complete digraphs. / Graduate

Este trabalho tem como objetivo avaliar fatores técnico-operacionais importantes na fabricação de peças pelo forjamento semissólido. Foi analisada a liga de alumínio AA7075. No estado semissólido o metal comporta-se como um líquido de alta viscosidade sob tensões de cisalhamento muito baixas, caracterizando o comportamento tixotrópico. Este processo também é chamado de tixoforjamento. Nestas condições ocorre um excelente preenchimento de matrizes que contenham formas complexas e com elevado índice de detalhes. Produtos acabados de alumínio (near net shape) com geometria complexa fabricados por tixoconformação já são empregados na indústria automotiva. Neste trabalho foram avaliados a influência da morfologia de sua microestrutura, a temperatura de forjamento e a velocidade de deformação. Os experimentos foram ainda controlados por análises metalográficas, ensaios de compressão uniaxial e ensaio de forjabilidade. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que o método de fabricação da matéria prima SWA® com fração de sólidos entre 40 e 60 % e uma velocidade de deformação entre 30 a 50 s-1 são os parâmetros mais adequados para o forjamento semissólido. / This work has as objective to evaluate important technical-operational factors in the production o f pieces for the semi-solid forging. lt was analyzed o f aluminum AA7075 alloy. In the semi-solid state a metal behaves as a liquíd ofhigh viscosity under low shear stress, it is characterizing the behavior thixotropic. This process is also called thixoforging. In these conditions an excellent filling of dies that contain complex shape and with high index of details. Thixoforming complex near net shaped products in aluminium alloys are already finding their ways in automotive applications. In this work they were appraised the influence of the morphology of its microstruture, the forging temperature and the strain rate. The experiments were still controlled by analyses metalográfic, upsetting and forgability test. The obtained results showed that the method of production of raw material SIMA, with fraction of solids of 40-60% and a strain rate among 30 to 50 s-1 are the parameters more adapteds for the semi-solid forging process.

Récemment, le développement de systèmes intelligents dédiés pour la compréhension du comportement humain est devenu un axe de recherche très important. En effet, il est très important de comprendre le comportement humain pour rendre les machines capables d'aider et interagir avec les humains. Pour cela, plusieurs approches de l'état de l'art commencent par détecter automatiquement un ensemble de points 2D ou 3D, appelés marqueurs, sur le corps et/ou le visage humain à partir de données visuelles. L’analyse des séquences temporelles de ces marqueurs pose plusieurs défis dus aux erreurs de suivi et aux variabilités temporelles et de pose. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons deux nouvelles représentations spatio-temporelles avec des outils de calcul appropriés pour la compréhension du comportement humain. La première consiste à représenter une séquence temporelle de marqueurs par une trajectoire de matrices de Gram. Les matrices de Gram sont des matrices semi-définies positives de rang fixe et vivent dans un espace non-linéaire dans lequel les outils d’apprentissage automatique conventionnels ne peuvent pas être appliqués directement. Nous évaluons l’efficacité de notre approche dans plusieurs applications, impliquant des marqueurs 2D et 3D de visages et de corps humain, tels que la reconnaissance des émotions à partir des expressions faciales la reconnaissance d’actions et des émotions à partir des données de profondeur 3D. La deuxième représentation proposée dans cette thèse est basée sur les coordonnées barycentriques des marqueurs de visages 2D. Cette représentation permet d’utiliser les outils de calcul et d’apprentissage automatique tels que les techniques d’apprentissage de métrique. Les résultats obtenus en reconnaissance des expressions faciales et en mesure automatique de la sévérité de la dépression à partir du visage montrent tout l’intérêt de la représentation barycentrique combinée à des techniques d’apprentissage automatique. Les résultats obtenus avec les deux méthodes proposées sur des bases de données réelles montrent la compétitivité de nos approches avec les méthodes récentes de l’état de l’art. / Developing intelligent systems dedicated to human behavior understanding has been a very hot research topic in the few recent decades. Indeed, it is crucial to understand the human behavior in order to make machines able to interact with, assist, and help humans in their daily life.. Recent breakthroughs in computer vision and machine learning have made this possible. For instance, human-related computer vision problems can be approached by first detecting and tracking 2D or 3D landmark points from visual data. Two relevant examples of this are given by the facial landmarks detected on the human face and the skeletons tracked along videos of human bodies. These techniques generate temporal sequences of landmark configurations, which exhibit several distortions in their analysis, especially in uncontrolled environments, due to view variations, inaccurate detection and tracking, missing data, etc. In this thesis, we propose two novel space-time representations of human landmark sequences along with suitable computational tools for human behavior understanding. Firstly, we propose a representation based on trajectories of Gram matrices of human landmarks. Gram matrices are positive semi-definite matrices of fixed rank and lie on a nonlinear manifold where standard computational and machine learning techniques could not be applied in a straightforward way. To overcome this issue, we make use of some notions of the Riemannian geometry and derive suitable computational tools for analyzing Gram trajectories. We evaluate the proposed approach in several human related applications involving 2D and 3D landmarks of human faces and bodies such us emotion recognition from facial expression and body movements and also action recognition from skeletons. Secondly, we propose another representation based on the barycentric coordinates of 2D facial landmarks. While being related to the Gram trajectory representation and robust to view variations, the barycentric representation allows to directly work with standard computational tools. The evaluation of this second approach is conducted on two face analysis tasks namely, facial expression recognition and depression severity level assessment. The obtained results with the two proposed approaches on real benchmarks are competitive with respect to recent state-of-the-art methods.

The responsiveness of government to citizens is the central concern in normative democratic theory. Referendum is one of the means to accomplish this ideal. There have been, on the part of the referendum , accumulated experiences and fruitful results in the Western advanced democratic countries. Since 1990, nineteen local plebiscites have been held in Taiwan. The passing of the referendum law is an important milestone of Taiwan¡¦s democratic deepening. However, judging from the continued controversy on the referendum. Especially, referendum is the the settlement of dispute between exective and legislative . I attempt to find some theory from referendum and solve the settlement of dispute between exective and legislative.

Abstract This research describes the value chain development of Taiwan foundry industry¡¦s investment in China and analyzes how the foundry firm establishes its value chain and strategy in the different industry environment. The research also raises inferences about Taiwan foundry industry¡¦s value-chain mode and business model and expects to be reference materials for the industry and government. The research content includes the analysis of Taiwan and China semi-conductor industries¡¦ environment, the analysis of the industry value chain, and the scenario analysis of China¡¦s industry environment and Taiwan¡¦s foundry industry de velopment. Finally, here come the research findings of this thesis: 1. The foundry industry in Taiwan already established a stable competitive advantage. After investing in China, it will also play a key role in the development of China¡¦s semi-conductor industries. 2. Taiwan foundry industry will be the coordinator of China¡¦s semi-conductor industry value-chain, and promote the development there. 3. There exist the demand and trend which the foundry industry will raise its added value in the semi-conductor industry value-chain, especially after investing in China. 4. When the foundry industry tries to raise its added value, some activities like IP providing and IC design service will be the optimum alternatives. 5. After investing in China, the development of the foundry industry will be highly related to the progress of local system industry and IC design industry. 6. No matter how industry environment evolve, the foundry industry will change its value chain structure on the basis of reducing the transaction cost and developing the synergy. 7. The foundry industry won¡¦t do the real integration unless the foundry¡¦s potential profit be limited or the real integration can bring the huge profit. 8. No matter integrate or not, the foundry industry shouldn¡¦t compete with its customer. 9. The foundry industry establish a symbiosis system with its customer, but it will form the different strategies depend the customer classification.

Thesis (M.S.) -- Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: liquid mixing; CDS; casting' wrought; AI-Si; AI alloys; AI; aluminum; Includes bibliographical references (p.11-9).

Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2002--Aachen.

Orientador: Mário De Beni Arrigoni / Resumo: Objetivo do estudo foi avaliar a análise dos isótopos estáveis (13C, 2H, 16O e 15N) da carne na caracterização dos sistemas de terminação de bovinos Nelore criados na mesma propriedade. Três sistemas de terminação de bovinos de corte foram escolhidos, sendo estes: confinamento, semi-confinamento e pasto. Vinte amostras de do M. Semitendinosus de cada sistema foram coletadas para análise. Os dados isotópicos dos músculos com e sem extração de gordura foram submetidos à análise de univariada (ANOVA) e multivariada (MANOVA). O Carbono-13 foi diferente (P ≤ 0,001) entre os sistemas de terminação. O Nitrogênio-15 foi maior (P ≤ 0,001) para as amostras de confinamento, em comparação às amostras de semi-confinamento e pasto. Os elementos 2H e 16O não foram diferentes (P ˃ 0,05). O método de extração de gordura das amostras de carne aumentou a variabilidade dos resultados, diminuindo a distinção dos sistemas produtivos. A combinação dos elementos significativos obteve um total percentual de variação de 87,4% nos dois primeiros componentes diferenciando os três sistemas e pela análise de discriminante linear determinou uma taxa global correta de classificação de 98,3% e uma taxa de validação cruzada de 95,0%. A razão isotópica dos elementos Carbono e Nitrogênio com e sem extração de gordura, permitem diferenciar e certificar as amostras de carne entre os sistemas de confinamento, semi-confinamento e pasto com alta precisão em mesma propriedade. / Doutor