This thesis examines the nature of long-term absolute pitch memory—an ability traditionally assumed to belong only to absolute pitch (AP) possessors—by testing for evidence of this memory for “standard” frequencies in musicians without AP. Standard frequencies, those based on the equally tempered system with A = 440 Hz, are common in the sonic environment of the Western college musical education, and thus could have the opportunity to penetrate listeners’ long-term memories. Through four experimental tasks, this thesis examines musicians’ ability to recognize and produce frequencies from the set of equally tempered frequencies based on A = 440 Hz, without regard to those musicians’ pitch-labeling abilities. The experimental tasks also compare freshmen with seniors to test if exposure to standard frequencies during a college musical education engrains standard frequencies in long-term memory. The results suggest that musicians without AP cannot distinguish between standard and nonstandard frequencies during listening tasks, but they may be able to recall them without prompting when singing familiar folk songs. However, musical training during the college years does not seem to improve these abilities. Further experimentation is needed to corroborate the results, including modifications to the current tasks and methodology, as well as a larger subject size.

AMSR-E is a space-borne radiometer which measures Earth microwave emissions or brightness temperatures (Tb) over a wide swath. AMSR-E data and images are useful in mapping valuable Earth-surface and atmospheric phenomena. A modified version of the Scatterometer Image Reconstruction (SIR) algorithm creates Tb images from the collected data. SIR is an iterative algorithm with tuning parameters to optimize the reconstruction for the instrument and channel. It requires an approximate aperture function for each channel to be effective. This thesis presents a simulator-based optimization of SIR iteration and aperture function threshold parameters for each AMSR-E channel. A comparison of actual Tb images generated using the optimal and sub-optimal values is included. Tuned parameters produce images with sharper transitions between regions of low and high Tb for lower-frequency channels. For higher-frequency channels, the severity of artifacts due to temporal Tb variation of the input measurements decreases and coverage gaps are eliminated after tuning. A two-parameter Gaussian-like bell model is currently assumed in image reconstruction to approximate the AMSR-E aperture function. This paper presents a method of estimating the effective AMSR-E aperture function using Tb measurements and geographical information. The estimate is used as an input for image reconstruction. The resulting Tb images are compared with those produced with the previous Gaussian approximation. Results support the estimates found in this paper for channels 1h, 1v, and 2h. Images processed using the old or new aperture functions for all channels differed by a fraction of a Kelvin over spatially smooth regions.

AbstractThe mapping of habitats is the first step that is done in policies that target theenvironment, as well as in spatial planning and management. The biodiversityplans are always centered around habitats. Therefore, constant monitoring ofthese delicate species in terms of health, changes, and extinction is a must inbiodiversity plans. Human activities are constantly growing, resulting in theextinction of land and marine habitats. Land habitats are being destroyed using airpollution and the cutting of forests. At the same time, marine habitats are beingdestroyed due to acidification of ocean waters and waste materials from theindustries and pollution. The author has focused on aquatic habitats in thisdissertation, mainly coral reefs. An estimate of 27% of coral reef ecosystems havebeen destroyed, and a further 30% are at risk of being damaged in the comingyears. Coral reefs occupy 1% of the ocean floor, and yet they provide a home to30% of marine organisms. To analyze the health of these aquatic habitats, theyneed to be assessed through habitat mapping. Habitat mapping shows thegeographic distribution of different habitats within a particular area. Marinehabitats are typically mapped using camera imagery. The quality of underwaterimages suffers from the characteristics of the marine environment. This results inblurry images or containing particles that cover many parts of an image. Toovercome this, underwater image enhancement algorithms are used to preprocessimages beforehand. Now, there are many underwater image enhancementalgorithms that target different characteristics of the marine environment, butthere is no consensus among researchers about a single underwater technique thatcan be used for any marine dataset. In this dissertation, multiple experiments onvarious popular image enhancement techniques (seven) were conducted and usedto reach a decision about a single underwater approach for all datasets. Thedatasets include EILAT, EILAT2, RSMAS, and MLC08. Also, two state-of-the-artdeep convolutional neural networks for habitat mapping, i.e., DenseNet andMobileNet tested. Maximum results from the combination of Contrast LimitedAdaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) achieved as underwater imageenhancement technique and DenseNet as deep convolutional network. / Not applicable

[pt] OnDBTuning é uma ontologia de tuning (semi-automático) de banco de dados relacional. Ontologias são artefatos que representam o conhecimento de um domínio específico e podem ser usadas para se inferir conhecimentos. No entanto, em geral, a maioria das aplicações envolve apenas uma descrição formal e estática de conceitos. Além disso, como tuning de banco de dados envolve muitas regras baseadas na experiência e em algoritmos de caixa preta, torna-se um desafio descrever esse processo de inferência. Esse trabalho de pesquisa apresenta primeiramente a solução OnDBTuning que é uma ontologia no domínio de tuning. Em seguida, ele propõe uma implementação de regras em SPARQL Inferencing Notation (SPIN) na OnDBTuning. Por fim, mostra uma avaliação prática da solução para recomendação de índices e visões materializadas. / [en] OnDBTuning is a relational database (semi-automatic) tuning ontology. Ontologies are artifacts that represent specific domain knowledge and can be used to infer knowledge. However, in general, most applications include only a formal and static description of concepts. Moreover, as database tuning involves many rules-of-thumb and black-box algorithms, it becomes challenging to describe these inference procedures. This research work first presents the OnDBTuning ontology solution focusing on the inference of tuning actions. Next, it proposes an implementation of the OnDBtuning rules using SPARQL Inferencing Notation (SPIN). Finally, it shows a practical evaluation of our solution concerning index and materialized views recommendations.

[pt] Sumarização automática é a tarefa de gerar resumos concisos, corretos e com consistência factual. A tarefa pode ser aplicada a diversos estilos textuais, dentre eles notícias, publicações acadêmicas e avaliações de produtos ou lugares. A presente dissertação aborda a sumarização de múltiplas avaliações. Esse tipo de aplicação se destaca por sua natureza não supervisionada e pela necessidade de lidar com a redundância das informações presentes nas avaliações. Os trabalhos de sumarização automática são avaliados utilizando a métrica ROUGE, que se baseia na comparação de n-gramas entre o texto de referência e o resumo gerado. A falta de dados supervisionados motivou a criação da arquitetura MeanSum, que foi a primeira arquitetura de rede neural baseada em um modelo não supervisionado para essa tarefa. Ela é baseada em auto-encoder e foi estendida por outros trabalhos, porém nenhum deles apresentou os efeitos do uso do mecanismo de atenção e tarefas auxiliares durante o treinamento do modelo. O presente trabalho é dividido em duas etapas. A primeira trata de um experimento no qual extensões à arquitetura do MeanSum foram propostas para acomodar mecanismos de atenção e tarefas auxiliares de classificação de sentimento. Ainda nessa etapa, explora-se o uso de dados sintéticos para adaptar modelos supervisionados a tarefas não supervisionadas. Na segunda etapa, os resultados obtidos anteriormente foram utilizados para realizar um estudo sobre o uso de ajuste fino (fine-tuning) de modelos de linguagem Transformers pré-treinados. A utilização desses modelos mostrou ser uma alternativa promissora para enfrentar a natureza não supervisionada do problema, apresentando um desempenho de + 4 ROUGE quando comparado a trabalhos anteriores. / [en] Automatic summarization is the task of generating concise, correct, and factual summaries. The task can be applied to different textual styles, including news, academic publications, and product or place reviews. This dissertation addresses the summary of multiple evaluations. This type of application stands out for its unsupervised nature and the need to deal with the redundancy of the information present in the reviews. The automatic summarization works are evaluated using the ROUGE metric, which is based on the comparison of n-grans between the reference text and the generated summary. The lack of supervised data motivated the creation of the MeanSum architecture, which was the first neural network architecture based on an unsupervised model for this task. It is based on auto-encoder and has been extended to other works, but none explored the effects of using the attention mechanism and auxiliary tasks during training. The present work is divided into two parts: the first deals with an experiment in which we make extensions to the MeanSum architecture, adding attention mechanisms and auxiliary sentiment classification tasks. In the same experiment, we explore synthetic data to adapt supervised models for unsupervised tasks. In the second part, we used the results previously obtained to carry out a second study on fine-tuning pre-trained Transformer language models. The use of these models showed a promising alternative to the unsupervised nature of the problem, outperforming previous works by + 4 ROUGE.

With the increasing demand for high performance communication networks and the proliferation of mobile devices, significant advances in antenna design are essential. In recent years the rising demands of the mobile wireless communication industry have forced antennas to have increased performance while being limited to an ever decreasing footprint. Such design constraints have forced antenna designers to consider frequency agile antennas so that their behavior can adapt with changing system requirements or environmental conditions. Frequency agile antennas used for mobile handset applications must also be inexpensive, robust, and make use of electronic switching with reasonable DC power consumption. Previous works have addressed a number of these requirements but relatively little work has been performed on frequency agile dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs). The objective of this thesis is to investigate the use of DRAs for frequency reconfigurability. DRAs are an attractive option due to their compactness, very low losses leading to high radiation efficiencies (better than 95%) and fairly wide bandwidths compared to alternatives. DRA’s are also well suited for mobile communications since they can be placed on a ground plane and are by nature low gain antennas whose radiation patterns typically resemble those of short electric or magnetic dipoles. One way to electronically reconfigure a DRA, in the sense of altering the frequency band over which the input reflection coefficient of the antenna is below some threshold, is to partially load one face of the DRA with a conducting surface. By altering the way in which this surface connects to the groundplane on which the DRA is mounted, the DRA can be reconfigured due to changes in its mode structure. This connection was first made using several conducting tabs which resulted in a tuning range of 69% while having poor cross polarization performance. In order to address the poor cross polarization performance a second conducting surface was placed on the opposing DRA wall. This technique significantly reduced the cross polarization levels while obtaining a tuning range of 83%. The dual-wall conductively loaded DRA was then extended to include a full electronic implementation using PIN diodes and varactor diodes in order to achieve discrete and continuous tuning respectively. The two techniques both achieved discrete tuning ranges of 95% while the varactor implementation also had a continuous tuning range of 59% while both maintaining an acceptable cross polarization level.

In this paper we present a method of using the Shortest-Path Graph Kernel, on graph-based features of computer programs, to train a Support Vector Regression model which predicts execution time speedup over baseline given an unseen program and a point in optimization space, based on a method proposed in Using Graph-Based Program Characterization for Predictive Modeling by Park et al. The optimization space is represented by command-line parameters to the polyhedral C-to-C compiler PoCC, and PolyBench is used to generate the data set of speedups over baseline. The model is found to produce results reasonable by some metrics, but due to the large error and the pseudo-random behaviour of the output the method, in its current form, must reluctantly be rejected. / I den här raporten presenterar vi en metod att träna en Stöd-vektor-regressions-modell som givet ett osett program och en punkt i optimeringsrymden kan förutsäga hur mycket snabbare över baslinjen programmet kommer att exekvera förutsatt att man applicerar givna optimeringar. För att representera programmet använder vi en grafstruktur för vilken vi kan använda en grafkärna, Shortest-Path Graph Kernel, vilken kan avgöra hur lika två olika grafer är varandra. Metoden är baserad på en metod presenterad av Park et al. i Using Graph-Based Program Characterization for Predictive Modeling. Optimeringsrymden erhålls genom olika kombinationer av kommandoradsparametrar till den polyhedriska C-till-C-kompilatorn PoCC. Testdatat erhölls genom att förberäkna hastighetsfaktorer för alla optimeringar och alla program i test-algoritms-biblioteket PolyBench. Vi finner att modellen i vissa mått mätt producerar "bra" resultat, men p.g.a. av det stora felet och det slumpmässiga beteendet måste dessvärre metoden, i dess nuvarande form,förkastas.

The mechanical properties of a 2D material can be altered with Kirigami, a Japanese paper cutting art. Such altered materials are called metamaterials – where a certain geometry is imposed on a material to change its material properties.This thesis documents the effects of a specific Kirigami pattern cut into a range of different 2D materials, such as plastic films or paper – the results of which will be used to evaluate the suitability of each material candidate to a product, the ‘IV strip’, designed and produced by Ortrud Medical AB.The strip contains a patterned ‘spring’ area, which has reduced stiffness due to the patterned defects imposed on it, and a force indication zone. The force indication zone will not be considered.The material selection study used a Pugh’s Evaluation matrix method to choose the best candidate. A few materials were chosen due their suitability in criteria such as robustness of results, tearing force and patient comfort. One material was selected for further experimentation due to its interesting stress/strain characteristics.A further study was then carried out to assess the possibility of tuning the pattern dimensions to alter the tensile properties of the metamaterial. This study includes both computational and experimental methods to verify the feasibility of a simulation model. The study found that it is possible to draw relationships between cut length and stiffness of the pattern. Whilst the computational and experimental results were similar for very small deformations, the FEM simulation struggles at higher deformations because of the lack of available material properties for the program input. / De mekaniska egenskaperna hos ett tvådimensionellt material kan ändras med hjälp av Kirigami, som är en japansk klippkonst i papper. Material där man med geometriförändringar ändrar materialegenskaperna kallas metamaterial. I det här examensarbetet dokumenteras inverkan av ett Kirigami-mönster i olika material, bland annat plast och papper. Resultaten kommer att användas för att utvärdera om något passar att användas till ett stasband framtaget av Ortrud Medical AB. Remsan har en mönstrad ”fjäderyta”, som påverkar styvheten, och en kraftzoon. I det här arbetet studeras enbart det mönstrade området. För att utvärdera materialen och välja det mest lämpade, användes Pughs utvärderingsmatris. Materialen utvärderas bland annat med avseende på robusthet, dragmotstånd och patientkomfort. Ett av materialen valdes ut för ytterligare provning på grund av dess intressanta deformationsbeteende.I det här arbetet tillämpas både experimentella och analytiska metoder. Resultaten användes sedan för att verifiera en FE-modell av systemet. Modellen och experimenten gav liknade resultat vid små deformationer, dock begränsades verifieringen av materialdatabasen. En delstudie visade att det är möjlighet att ställa in mönsterdimensionerna, så att töjningsegenskaperna hos metamaterialet kan justeras.

De mekaniska egenskaperna hos ett tvådimensionellt material kan ändras med hjälp av Kirigami, som är en japansk klippkonst i papper. Material där man med geometriförändringar ändrar materialegenskaperna kallas metamaterial. I det här examensarbetet dokumenteras inverkan av ett Kirigami-mönster i olika material, bland annat plast och papper. Resultaten kommer att användas för att utvärdera om något passar att användas till ett stasband framtaget av Ortrud Medical AB. Remsan har en mönstrad ”fjäderyta”, som påverkar styvheten, och en kraftzoon. I det här arbetet studeras enbart det mönstrade området. För att utvärdera materialen och välja det mest lämpade, användes Pughs utvärderingsmatris. Materialen utvärderas bland annat med avseende på robusthet, dragmotstånd och patientkomfort. Ett av materialen valdes ut för ytterligare provning på grund av dess intressanta deformationsbeteende. I det här arbetet tillämpas både experimentella och analytiska metoder. Resultaten användes sedan för att verifiera en FE-modell av systemet. Modellen och experimenten gav liknade resultat vid små deformationer, dock begränsades verifieringen av materialdatabasen. En delstudie visade att det är möjlighet att ställa in mönsterdimensionerna, så att töjningsegenskaperna hos metamaterialet kan justeras. / The mechanical properties of a 2D material can be altered with Kirigami, a Japanese paper cutting art. Such altered materials are called metamaterials – where a certain geometry is imposed on a material to change its material properties.  This thesis documents the effects of a specific Kirigami pattern cut into a range of different 2D materials, such as plastic films or paper – the results of which will be used to evaluate the suitability of each material candidate to a product, the ‘IV strip’, designed and produced by Ortrud Medical AB.  The strip contains a patterned ‘spring’ area, which has reduced stiffness due to the patterned defects imposed on it, and a force indication zone. The force indication zone will not be considered. The material selection study used a Pugh’s Evaluation matrix method to choose the best candidate. A few materials were chosen due their suitability in criteria such as robustness of results, tearing force and patient comfort. One material was selected for further experimentation due to its interesting stress/strain characteristics. A further study was then carried out to assess the possibility of tuning the pattern dimensions to alter the tensile properties of the metamaterial. This study includes both computational and experimental methods to verify the feasibility of a simulation model. The study found that it is possible to draw relationships between cut length and stiffness of the pattern. Whilst the computational and experimental results were similar for very small deformations, the FEM simulation struggles at higher deformations because of the lack of available material properties for the program input.

Yes / In this paper, we present a simple reconfigurable multiband antenna with two PIN diode switches for WiMAX/WLAN applications. The antenna permits reconfigurable switching in up to ten frequency bands between 2.2 GHz and 6 GHz, with relative impedance bandwidths of around 2.5% and 8%. The proposed antenna has been simulated using CST microwave studio software and fabricated on an FR-4 substrate. It is compact, with an area of 50 × 45 mm2, and has a slotted ground substrate. Both measured and simulated return loss characteristics of the optimized antenna show that it satisfies the requirement of 2.4/5.8 GHz WLAN and 3.5 GHz WiMAX antenna applications. Moreover, there is good agreement between the measured and simulated result in terms of radiation pattern and gain. / Engineering and Physical Science Research Council through Grant EP/E022936A.