Yes / The current study investigated the distribution of inorganic metals in the biggest reservoir in the neighbourhood of Misurata City, Tawargah Pond. The investigation was carried out during the topical periods of dry and wet season between August 2010 and January 2011. Levels of trace metals lead (Pb), copper (Cu), iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn)) were determined in the water samples taken. An atomic absorption spectrophotometer, Model 180-30 Hitachi, was used to determine heavy metal concentrations. The instrument was calibrated and standardized with different working standards. After making sure that the instrument was properly calibrated and results of the standard measurements were in the confidence limit, the concentration of metals in each sample was measured individually. High levels of lead and iron were found in water which indicates a possible contribution from the industrial activities and air pollution.

Deep row incorporation of biosolids is an alternative land application method that may allow higher than currently permitted mine land reclamation application rates. Biosolids treated by various processes possess characteristics that uniquely affect metal solubility and mobility due to their influence on metal speciation. The objectives of this research were to compare the effects of biosolids stabilization type and rate on heavy metal solubility, mobility, and speciation. Two rates each of Alexandria, (Virginia) anaerobically digested (213 and 426 dry Mg ha-1) and Blue Plains (Washington, DC) lime-stabilized (329 and 657 dry Mg ha-1) biosolids were placed in trenches at a mineral sands mine reclamation site in Dinwiddie County, Virginia in June and July 2006. Vertical and lateral transport of heavy metals from the biosolids seams were determined by analyzing leachate collected in zero tension lysimeters below the trenches and suction lysimeters adjacent to the trenches. Chloride (Cl-), sulfate (SO42-), nitrate (NO3-), phosphate (PO43-), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and pH were also determined within the dissolved fractions (< 0.45 µm) collected on September 8, 2006, November 3, 2006, January 5, 2007, June 8, 2007, and September 7, 2007 as input for the speciation program MINTEQA2. Silver, Cd, Pb, and Sn did not move vertically or laterally to any significant extent. Lime-stabilized biosolids produced higher cumulative metal mass transport per sampling period for Cu (967 g ha-1), Ni (171 g ha-1), and Zn (1027 g ha-1) than the anaerobically digested biosolids and control during the 15-month period following entrenching. Barium mass loss was similar for both biosolids. All metals moved primarily with particulates. MINTEQA2 predicted the majority of the metals within the dissolved fraction were present as free ions. As pH decreased and time increased, the amount of association with fulvic acids decreased allowing more free ions and binding with inorganic ligands. Little movement into groundwater demonstrates that anaerobically digested and lime-stabilized biosolids can be land-applied at high rates with little concern of heavy metal contamination of groundwater under these conditions. / Master of Science

Optoacoustic spectroscopy is a relatively old technique first described by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. However, over the intervening years, little use was made of the technique due to its low sensitivity. This was due to low source intensities of available infrared light sources which limited the optoacoustic signal strength. With the advent of laser infrared light sources in the 1960's, there has been a resurgence of interest in optoacoustics. No longer is low source intensity a major limitation to successful optoacoustic spectroscopy. Although adequate infrared light sources are available, the large window background signal observed in all optoacoustic systems has been the major limitation in extending trace gas detection limits to the ppb or sub-ppb level. Similarly, there has been little demonstration of the use of the optoacoustic technique in environments where mixtures of gases are present which have severe spectral overlap. This work will discuss a new windowless cell design that largely eliminates the signal background problem ubiquitous to all presently available optoacoustic cells. New methodologies will be discussed that allow analyses of mixtures to be performed even in cases where spectral overlap is severe. Limitations to both the windowless cell and the various multicomponent analysis strategies are discussed.

Bruning considered sets of isospectral Schrodinger operators with smooth real potentials on a compact manifold of dimension three. He showed the set of potentials associated to an isospectral set is compact in the topology of smooth functions by relating the spectrum to the trace of the heat semi-group. Similarly, we can consider the resonances of Schrodinger operators with real valued potentials on Euclidean space of whose support lies inside a ball of fixed radius that generate the same resonances as some fixed Schrodinger operator, an ``isoresonant" set of potentials. This isoresonant set of potentials is also compact in the topology of smooth functions for dimensions one and three. The basis of the result stems from the relation of a regularized wave trace to the resonances via the Poisson formula (also known as the Melrose trace formula). The second link is the small-t asymptotic expansion of the regularized wave trace whose coefficients are integrals of the potential function and its derivatives. For an isoresonant set these coefficients are equal due to the Poisson formula. The equivalence of coefficients allows us to uniformly bound the potential functions and their derivatives with respect to the isoresonant set. Finally, taking a sequence of functions in the isoresonant set we use the uniform bounds to construct a convergent subsequence using the Arzela-Ascoli theorem.

De nombreuses études ses sont intéressées à l’influence du sommeil sur la mémoire. Une période de sommeil comparée à une période d’éveil permet de réduire l’oubli, d’améliorer les performances mais également de réorganiser les traces mnésiques, favorisant ainsi la créativité et l’extraction de règles. Ces études se basent sur les modèles classiques de la mémoire et expliquent ces observations par une interaction entre les processus implicites et explicites au cours du sommeil. Cependant, les modèles classiques de la mémoire semblent limités pour décrire la totalité des processus de réorganisation des traces mnésiques observés après une période de sommeil. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous avons tenté de comprendre l’influence du sommeil sur la réorganisation des traces à travers le modèle Act-In, un modèle de mémoire à traces multiples se plaçant dans la lignée de la cognition incarnée.Nous avons développé notre recherche autour de quatre axes expérimentaux. Dans un premier temps nous souhaitions vérifier si une période de sommeil permet de transformer passivement une trace implicite en trace explicite. Nous souhaitions par la suite étudier l’effet du sommeil sur les processus d’intégration multi-composants et d’activation inter-traces. Selon nous, le sommeil permettrait de renforcer l’intégration des composants au sein d’une trace et il permettrait également de favoriser la mise en relation de plusieurs traces, conduisant à l’émergence d’éléments communs. Enfin, dans le dernier axe de ce travail de recherche, nous nous sommes intéressés aux conséquences des modifications nocturnes liées à l’âge sur la consolidation mnésique au cours du sommeil. / Numerous studies have been interested in the effect of sleep on memory. For instance, a period of sleep as compared to a similar period of wakefulness protects memories from interferences, improves performances, but also reorganizes memory traces favoring creativity and rules extraction. These studies are based on classical memory models and explain these observations by an interaction between implicit and explicit processes. However, these models seem to be limited to describe all the processes involved in memory reorganization. In this thesis, we tried to understand the influence of sleep on memory reorganization within Act-In memory model, a multiple traces memory model in the line of grounded cognition. We developed our research within four experimental axes. First of all, we wanted to verify if sleep could transform an implicit trace into an explicit one. We also wanted to study the effect of sleep on multi-components integration and inter-traces activation. We assumed that sleep could transform memory traces enhancing the integration of the trace components and could favor the link between different traces leading to the emergence of common elements. Finally, we were interested in the consequences of nocturnal modifications during aging on memory consolidation.

L’école, portée par ce que Bernard Rey (1996) nomme « l’intention scripturale », fait grand usage des traces écrites. Or, dès notre état des lieux chez les maîtres experts à l’école primaire, il apparaît indépendamment des niveaux et des disciplines, que ces traces sont omniprésentes, courtes, simultanées, standardisées. Elles témoignent donc d’une réalité de terrain : les pratiques scolaires n’intègrent pas l’expérience singulière des sujets. Il convient alors de construire une « théorie du sens de la trace scolaire », qui permette l’émergence et la mobilisation de chacun dans sa particularité, sans renoncer à l’exigence de construction du commun. En fonction de son niveau d'expérience, le sujet a tendance à mobiliser de façon privilégiée certaines conduites. Celles-ci fonctionnent en synergie dans des processus dominants et évoluent au gré de son expérience : la familiarisation, l'imprégnation, l'intégration, la création. Cette thèse montre l'existence d'un malentendu socio-conatif, défini par une incompatibilité entre le processus qui donne sens à la trace du point de vue de l'élève d'une part, et le dispositif pédagogique organisé par le maître d'autre part. Le déni des mobiles de l'élève crée les conditions de la démobilisation, d'une "trace désaffectée". Le cadre théorique, progressivement tissé, offre les moyens de situer les mobiles d’actions du sujet à plusieurs échelles, et permet d’imaginer des organisations collectives qui donnent, comme le dit Philippe Meirieu, « à chacun une place et un projet à tous ». / The school, driven by what Bernard Rey (1996) calls "the scriptural intention," makes extensive use of written traces. However, from our assessment of expert primary school teachers, it appears that regardless of levels and disciplines, these traces are omnipresent, short, simultaneous, standardised. They therefore demonstrate a reality on the ground: school practices do not include the singular experience of the subjects. So it is then necessary to construct a "theory of the meaning of the school trace," which helps the promotion and mobilisation of unique individuals, without stifling the construction of the wider group.Depending on their level of experience, the subject tends to favour certain behaviours. These work in synergy in dominant processes and evolve according to their experience: familiarisation, impregnation, integration, creation. This thesis shows the existence of a socio-conative misunderstanding. It is defined by an incompatibility between the process that gives meaning to the trace (from the pupil’s perspective), and the pedagogical device organised by the teacher. The denial of the pupil’s motives creates the conditions of demobilisation, a "disused trace". The theoretical framework, built gradually, can help locate the subject’s action motives on several scales, and lets us imagine collective organisations that give, as Philippe Meirieu says, "to everyone a place and a project to all".

La complexité croissante des systèmes multiprocesseurs sur puce (MPSoC) rend la vie plus difficile aux ingénieurs à cause des bugs et des inefficacités qui peuvent avoir un très large éventail de sources. L'interaction matériel / logiciel peut être l'une de ces sources, dont l'identification précoce et la résolution doivent être une priorité pour l'intégration rapide du système. Ainsi, en raison du grand nombre d'entrelacements d'exécution possibles, reproduire les conditions d'apparition d'une erreur ou d'un problème de performance est très difficile. Une approche de ce problème consiste à tracer une exécution et exploiter cette trace en faisant des analyses postérieures. L'obtention de traces à partir de vrai matériel va à l'encontre du processus de développement récent, désormais largement adoptés par l'industrie et l'académie, qui repose sur la simulation pour anticiper l'intégration matériel / logiciel. De nombreux systèmes multi-cœurs sur puce ont tendance à avoir des hiérarchies mémoire spécifiques, pour rendre le matériel plus simple et prévisible, au prix de voir percoler les contraintes matérielles vers les niveaux élevés de la pile logicielle. Malgré les efforts des ingénieurs, il est difficile d'assurer que toutes les mesures de prévention sont prises pour assurer une propriété donnée, comme l’absence de course lors de l'accès aux variables partagées ou la cohérence des données. Dans ce contexte, le processus de débogage est particulièrement pénible car il implique d'analyser des flux d'exécution parallèles. L'exécution d'un programme à plusieurs reprises est une partie intégrale du processus de débogage classique, mais le non-déterminisme du fait de l'exécution en parallèle conduit souvent à différents chemins d'exécution et donc des comportements différents.Cette thèse détaille les défis et les enjeux derrière la production et l'exploitation des traces "bien formés" dans un environnement de prototypage virtuel qui utilise la traduction binaire dynamique comme technique de simulation des processeurs. Ces traces contiennent des relations de causalité entre les événements qui permettent, d'une part, de simplifier l'analyse et, d'autre part, d'éviter de faire confiance à des horloges globales pour synchroniser les événements. Nous proposons un formalisme de définition des traces et détaillons sa mise en œuvre qui permet de rester non-intrusif aussi bien du point de vue matériel que logiciel. Nous utilisons ces traces pour aider à identifier et corriger les bugs sur les plateformes qui ont multiple cœurs. Nous présentons tout d'abord une méthode pour identifier les violations potentielles de cohérence de cache dans des plates-formes possédant des caches mais qui n'ont pas de matériel garantissant leur cohérence. Notre méthode identifie des violations potentielles qui peuvent apparaître au cours d'une exécution donnée en analysant les traces pour les deux stratégies d’écritures de cache: "write-through" et "write-back". Finalement, Nous nous intéressons à la simplification du processus de débogage des logiciels exécutés en parallèle sur MPSoC en utilisant les traces. Dans cet objectif, nous proposons un processus de débogage qui rejoue une exécution fautive en utilisant des traces. Nous détaillons une stratégie pour fournir des fonctionnalités d'exécution inverse pour éviter des temps de simulation élevé pendant une session de débogage.Nous avons mené des expériences en utilisant des applications parallèles s'exécutant sur acs{MPSoC} pour quantifier notre proposition et montrer que l'ensemble des stratégies d'analyse et de débogage complexes peuvent être mis en œvre par des traces, conduisant ainsi à des résultats déterministes en moins de temps que la simulation seule. / The increasing complexity of Multiprocessor System on Chip (MPSoC) makes the engineers' life harder as bugs and inefficiencies can have a very broad range of sources. Hardware/software interactions can be one of these sources, their early identification and resolution being a priority for rapid system integration. Thus, due to the huge number of possible execution interleavings, reproducing the conditions of occurrence of a given error/performance issue is very difficult. One solution to this problem consists of tracing an execution for later analysis. Obtaining the traces from real platforms goes against the recent development processes, now broadly adopted by industry and academy, which rely on simulation to anticipate hardware/software integration. Multi/many core systems on chip tend to have specific memory hierarchies, to make the hardware simpler and predictable, at the cost of having the hardware percolate towards the high levels of the software stack. Despite the developers efforts, it is hard to make sure all preventive measures are taken to ensure a given property, such as lack of race conditions or data coherency. In this context, the debugging process is particularly tedious as it involves analyzing parallel execution flows. Executing a program many times is an integral part of the process in conventional debugging, but the non-determinism due to parallel execution often leads to different execution paths and different behaviors.This thesis details the challenges and issues behind the production and exploitation of "well formed" traces in a transaction accurate virtual prototyping environment that uses dynamic binary translation as processor simulation technology. These traces contain causality relations among events, which allow firstly to simplify the analysis, and secondly to avoid relying on timestamps. We propose a formalism to define the traces and detail an implementation to produce them in a non-intrusive manner. We use these traces to help identify and correct bugs on multi/many-core platforms. We firstly introduce a method to identify the potential cache coherence violations in non-cache-coherent platforms. Our method identifies potential violations which may occur during a given execution for write-through and write-back cache policies by analyzing the traces.We secondly focus on easing the debugging process of parallel software running on MPSoC using traces. To that aim, we propose a debugging process which replays a faulty execution using traces. We detail a strategy for providing forward and reverse execution features to avoid long simulation times during a debug session.We conducted experiments on MPSoC using parallel applications to quantify our proposal, and overall show that complex analysis and debug strategies can be implemented over traces, leading to deterministic results in shorter time than simulation alone.

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la manière dont l’écriture dans les nouvelles de Rick Bass est intimement liée aux modes d’être des animaux. L’esquive, le mutisme, la souffrance silencieuse ou bien encore la capacité de régénération des animaux mettent l’écriture au défi et l’entraînent à se renouveler. L’auteur évite en effet toute prise prédatrice du langage sur les mondes animaliers et instaure une coïncidence entre son écriture et les « styles » des animaux. Les traces descriptives, les comparaisons inattendues et les variations rythmiques ou sonores donnent à éprouver la présence animalière et disent l’altérité et la vulnérabilité des espèces que les narrateurs et les personnages chassent, rencontrent ou côtoient. Bass met ainsi en œuvre un processus d’approche simultanément physique et scriptural qui permet non seulement de réinventer le mode descriptif, mais aussi de renouveler nos conceptions de l’animal et notre relation au monde non-humain. Cette étude de la représentation animalière dans les nouvelles de Bass tente ainsi de montrer comment la structure et la substance de l’écriture fictionnelle revêtent un rôle essentiel, éthique, politique et idéologique, au sein d’un combat éminemment militant et écologiste. / This dissertation examines the manner in which the ways of being of animals have a shaping influence on the writing of Rick Bass’s short stories. The animals’ elusive presence, muteness, silent suffering, and capacity for regeneration challenge the writing and renew it. Indeed, far from trying to intellectually capture the worlds of animals with language, Bass creates some coincidence between his discourse and the “styles” of animals. The descriptive traces, surprising images, and rhythmic or sound variations make the reader feel the presence of animals and transcribe the otherness and the vulnerability of the species that Bass’s narrators and characters hunt, meet, or live with. Rick Bass thus creates a scriptural and physical approach that allows him to redefine the descriptive mode and to reinvent the relations between man and the nonhuman world. This study of the representation of animals in Rick Bass’s short stories thus tries to show how the structure and the substance of fictional writing play an essential role at the ethical, political and ideological levels in an outstandingly activist and environmental fight.

In this thesis we study the application of trace maps over Galois fields and Galois rings in the construction of non-binary linear and non-linear codes and mutually unbiased bases. Properties of the trace map over the Galois fields and Galois rings has been used very successfully in the construction of cocyclic Hadamard, complex Hadamard and Butson Hadamard matrices and consequently to construct linear codes over integers modulo prime and prime powers. These results provide motivation to extend this work to construct codes over integers modulo . The prime factorization of integers paved the way to focus our attention on the direct product of Galois rings and Galois fields of the same degree. We define a new map over the direct product of Galois rings and Galois fields by using the usual trace maps. We study the fundamental properties of the this map and notice that these are very similar to that of the trace map over Galois rings and Galois fields. As such this map called the trace-like map and is used to construct cocyclic Butson Hadamard matrices and consequently to construct linear codes over integers modulo . We notice that the codes construct in this way over the integers modulo 6 is simplex code of type . A further generalization of the trace-like map called the weighted-trace map is defined over the direct product of Galois rings and Galois fields of different degrees. We use the weighted-trace map to construct some non-linear codes and mutually unbiased bases of odd integer dimensions. Further more we study the distribution of over the Galois fields of degree 2 and use it to construct 2-dimensional, two-weight, self-orthogonal codes and constant weight codes over integers modulo prime.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 19, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: Dr. John D. Robertson. Includes bibliographical references.