Halbleiter Quantenpunkte (QDs) erregen immenses Interesse sowohl in der Grundlagen- als auch der anwendungsorientierten Forschung, was sich maßgeblich aus ihrer möglichen Nutzung als Fundamentalbausteine in neuartigen, physikalisch nicht-klassischen Bauelementen ergibt, darunter die Nutzung von QDs als gezielt ansteuerbare Lichtquellen zur Erzeugung einzelner Paare polarisationsverschränkter Photonen, was einen Kernbaustein in den intensiv erforschten optischen Quantenkryptographiekonzepten darstellt. Ein goßes Hindernis stellen hierbei die in allen aktuell verfügbaren QDs intrinsisch vorhandenen, ausgeprägten Asymmetrien dar. Diese sind eine Begleiterscheinung der selbstorganisierten Wachstumsmethoden der QDs und sie treten in verschiedenen Gestalten, wie Formasymmetrie oder inhomogenen Verspannungsverhältnissen innerhalb der QDs, auf. Im Gegenzug verursachen jene Asymmetrien deutliche Anisotropien in den optischen Eigenschaften der QDs, wodurch das optische Ansprechverhalten klassisch beschreibbar wird. Aus Sicht der anwendungsorientierten Forschung stehen Asymmetrien daher im Ruf ungewollte Nebeneffekte zu sein und es wird mit großem Aufwand daran geforscht, diese unter Kontrolle zu bringen. Für die Grundlagenforschung sind anisotrope QDs jedoch ein interessantes Modellsystem, da an ihnen fundamentale Quantenphysik beobachtbar ist, wobei anders als in Atomen die einschnürenden Potentiale nicht zwangsläufig zentralsymmetrisch sein müssen. Auf der Basis winkel- und polarisationsaufgelöster Photolumineszenzuntersuchungen (PL) wird die Anisotropie des linearen Polarisationsgrades in der Lumineszenzstrahlung (kurz: optische Anisotropie) der an CdSe/ZnSe-QDs gebundenen Exzitonen untersucht. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Elektron-Loch Austauschwechselwirkung in asymmetrischen QDs zu einer effektiven Umwandlung linearer in zirkulare Polarisationsanteile und umgekehrt führt. Die experimentellen Befunde lassen sich erfolgreich im Rahmen eines Exziton-Pseudospinformalismus, der auf der durch die Austauschwechselwirkung induzierten Feinstruktur der hellen Exzitonzustände basiert, beschreiben. Dies legt nahe, dass QDs funktionelle Bauelemente in hochintegrierten rein optischen Architekturen jenseits der viel diskutierten nichtklassischen Konzepte darstellen können, insbesondere als optische Polarisationskonverter und/oder -modulatoren. Weiterhin wird der Exziton-Pseudospinformalismus in Untersuchungen zur optischen Ausrichtung in QDs genutzt und gezeigt, wie so die anders nicht direkt messbare Symmetrieverteilung eines Ensembles von QDs detektiert werden kann. Diese Messungen stellen ein wertvolles Bindeglied zwischen optischen und strukturellen Untersuchungen dar, da sie einen direkten experimentellen Zugang zum mit topologischen Methoden nicht einsehbaren Anordnungsverhalten eingekapselter QDs liefern. Abschließend wird die optische Anisotropie unter Anlegung eines Magnetfeldes in der QD-Ebene untersucht. Dabei wird beobachtet, dass die Achse der linearen Polarisation der Lumineszenzstrahlung entweder entgegengesetzt zur Magnetfeldrichtung in der Probenebene rotiert oder fest entlang einer gegebenen kristallographischen Achse orientiert ist. Eine qualitative Auswertung der Ergebnisse auf der Basis des exzitonischen Pseudospin-Hamiltonian belegt, dass diese Polarisationsanteile durch isotrope und anisotrope Beiträge des Schwerloch Zeeman Terms begründet werden, wobei die anisotropen Anteile für ein kritisches Magnetfeld von B=0, 4 T gerade die forminduzierten uni-axialen Polarisationsanteile kompensieren, so dass ein optisches Verhalten resultiert, das man für hochsymmetrische QDs erwarten würde. Zur quantitativen Beschreibung wurde der vollständige k.p-Hamiltonianin der Basis der Schwerlochexzitonzustände numerisch ausgewertet und damit die optische Polarisation als Funktion der Magnetfeldstärke und -orientierung berechnet. Die Modellrechnungen stimmen mit die gemessenen Daten im Rahmen der experimentellen Unsicherheit mit einem jeweils probenspezifischen Parametersatz quantitativ überein. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass ein Ensemble von QDs ein optisches Signal, das man für hochsymmetrisches QDs erwarten würde, erzeugen kann ohne dass eine Symmetrisierung der hellen Exzitonzustände stattfindet, wie sie für nicht-klassische Anwednungen notwendig ist. Daraus ergibt sich, dass Konzepte, die Magnetfelder in der Probenebene zur Symmetrisierung des optischen Signals nutzen, mindestens die vier stark durchmischten Schwerlochexzitonzusände berücksichtigen müssen und eine Beschreibung, die nur die beiden hellen Exzitonzustände in Abwesenheit magnetischer Felder beinhaltet, zu kurz greift. Für die kontrovers geführte Diskussion bezüglich aktueller experimenteller Studien zur Erzeugung polarisationsverschränkter Photonen in asymmetrischen QDs ist daher zu verstehen, dass von solch einer vereinfachten Beschreibung nicht a priori erwartet werden kann, verlässliche Ergebnisse in Bezug auf exzitonische Bellzustände zu erzeugen. / Semiconductor Quantum Dots (QDs) have been attracting immense interest over the last decade from both basic and application-orientated research because of their envisioned use as fundamental building blocks in non-classical device architectures. Their presumable ease of integration into existing semiconductor technology has bought them the reputation of being cost-efficiently scalable and renders them a place among the top candidates in a wide range of proposed quantum logic and quantum information processing schemes. These include the highly acclaimed use of QD as triggered sources of single pairs of entangled photons, which is a key ingredient of most of the intensivly investigated optical quantum cryptography operations. A big obstacle towards these goals are the pronounced asymmetries that are intrinsically present in all currently availabe semiconductor QD systems. They are a natural by-product that stems from the employed self-assembled growth methods and manifest in various forms such as shape-asymmetry, inhomogeneous strain distribution within the QD and concomittant piezo-elecric fields. These asymmetries in return give rise to distinct anisotropies in the optical properties of QDs, which in fact render their optical response classic. For device oriented research these anisotropies are therefore typically considered unwanted and actively researched to be controlled. They are, however, interesting from a fundamental point of view, as anisotropic QDs basically provide a testbed system for fundamental atom-like quantum physics with non-centrosymmetric potentials. As shall be shown in the current work, this gives rise to novel and interesting physics in its own right. Employing photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) we investigate the optical anisotropy of the radiative recombination of excitons confined to CdSe/ZnSe QDs. This is done by angle-dependent polarization-resolved PL. We demonstrate experimentally that the electron-hole exchange interaction in asymmetric QDs gives rise to an effective conversion of the optical polarization from linear to circular and vice versa. The experiment is succesfully modeled in the frame of an exciton pseudospin-formalism that is based on the exchange induced finestructure splitting of the radiative excitonic states and unambiguously proves that the observed polarization conversion is the continuous-wave equivalent to quantum beats between the exchange split states in the time domain. These results indicate that QDs may offer extended functionality beyond non-classical light sources in highly integrated all-optical device schemes, such as polarization converters or modulators. In a further extension we apply the exciton pseudospin-formalism to optical alignment studies and demonstrate how these can be used to directly measure the otherwise hidden symmetry distribution over an ensemble of QDs. This kind of measurement may be used on future optical studies in order to link optical data more directly to structural investigations, as it yields valuable information on capped QDs that cannot be looked at directly by topological methods. In the last part of this work we study the influence of an in-plane magnetic field on the optical anisotropy. We find that the optical axis of the linear polarization component of the photoluminescence signal either rotates in the opposite direction to that of the magnetic field or remains fixed to a given crystalline direction. A qualitative theoretical analysis based on the exciton pseudospin Hamiltonian unambiguously demonstrates that these effects are induced by isotropic and anisotropic contributions to the heavy-hole Zeeman term, respectively. The latter is shown to be compensated by a built-in uniaxial anisotropy in a magnetic field B=0.4 T, resulting in an optical response that would be expected for highly symmetric QDs. For a comprehensive quantitative analysis the full heavy-hole exciton k.p-Hamiltonian is numerically calculated and the resulting optical polarization is modeled. The model is able to quantitatively describe all experimental results using a single set of parameters. From this model it is explicitly seen that a optical response characteristic for high symmetry QDs may be obtained from an ensemble of asymmetric QDs without a crossing of the zero-field bright exciton states, which was required for application of QDs in non-classical light sources. It is clearly demonstrated that any scheme using in-plane magnetic fields to symmetrize the optical response has to take into account at least four optically active states instead of the two observed in the absence of magnetic fields. These findings may explain some of the major disagreement on recent entanglement studies in asymmetric QDs, as models that do not take the above result into account cannot be a priori expected to provide reliable results on excitonic Bell states.

This study sought to evaluate the effect of participation in the Student-Guided Supports (SGS) curriculum on student behavior. The SGS curriculum was designed to teach students a set of simple behaviors to prompt and reinforce supportive teacher behavior. Student use of the SGS behaviors was hypothesized to initiate a constructive cycle of student-teacher interactions that increase teacher display of supportive behaviors and student display of SGS behaviors and academic engagement. Results of the study provided evidence of a functional relation between participation in the SGS curriculum and increased student use of requests for teacher feedback. They also provided evidence of a functional relation between student requests for feedback and teacher provision of feedback. While this study did not provide evidence of the establishment of constructive cycles of support it did offer the following: a) high school teachers typically engaged in low levels of the identified support behaviors, and b) students were able to reliably elicit these supportive behaviors by engaging in relatively simple prompting behaviors. Potential implications of the results and future research are discussed.

Over the last 35 years, the disproportionate use of discipline by gender, race/ethnicity, and disability status has been consistently documented. Specifically, Black males receive the majority of suspensions and expulsions. Discipline for Native American and Hispanic students, while often showing overrepresentation, is less consistent. There is however consistent evidence of disproportionate discipline for students with disabilities. Experiencing disproportionate discipline often leads to poor academic outcomes, drop out, and involvement in the juvenile justice system. The literature on disproportionate discipline does point to practices that may mitigate its occurrence. These include: shifting from reactive policies and practices to prevention frameworks, developing consistency for how consequences are delivered, reviewing behavioral data, and using graduated support. School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is a systems approach focusing on whole-school prevention of problem behavior through teaching and acknowledgement of appropriate behavior, consistent consequences, and data for decision-making within graduated levels of support. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of disproportionate discipline in Oregon middle schools and explore the potential impact that SWPBIS may have on discipline rates. Results from descriptive analysis of discipline data by gender, race/ethnicity, and disability status across 181 middle schools in Oregon showed that Black, Native American, and Hispanic students were overrepresented for suspension and expulsion. Specifically, Black students were 2.58 times more likely to receive out-of-school suspension and 2.79 times more likely to be expelled as all other students. In addition, Native American and Hispanic students were over 1.5 times more likely to be suspended or expelled as all other students. In contrast, White and Asian students were less likely to be suspended and half as likely to be expelled as all other students. Also, students with disabilities were nearly two times more likely to be suspended and 1.55 times more likely to be expelled as students without disabilities. Lastly, ANOVA results for a causal-comparative matched group design with SWPBIS level of implementation as the independent variable showed no statistically significant differences between groups for suspension or expulsion. Possible reasons for these findings are explored and implications for future research and policy are provided.

by Ka-Po Ma. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-105). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgments --- p.ii / Abstract --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Web-based Education --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Customized Web-based Learning --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Overview --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Web-based Education --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Impact on Traditional Learning --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Theoretical Perspectives on Teaching and Learning --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Behaviorism Versus Constructivism --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- "Categorization of Individual, Group and Collaborative Learn- ing" --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- On-line Eduation and Web-based Learning System --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4 --- Technologies used in Web-based Learning --- p.17 / Chapter 3 --- General Automated Timetabling --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1 --- Timtabling Problem --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2 --- Formulation and Solution Approaches --- p.22 / Chapter 4 --- "Virtual Campus, Customized Web-based Learning Environment" --- p.25 / Chapter 4.1 --- Changing Trend in Learning Process --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2 --- System Design Issue --- p.26 / Chapter 5 --- System Architecture Issue --- p.31 / Chapter 5.1 --- Client-server Model --- p.31 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Server Side --- p.33 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Client Side --- p.34 / Chapter 5.2 --- Functional-oriented Design --- p.35 / Chapter 5.3 --- Private Functionality Issue --- p.37 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Access Authorizing --- p.37 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Availability Updating --- p.40 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Personal Information Querying and Modifying --- p.42 / Chapter 5.3.4 --- Status Selecting --- p.42 / Chapter 5.3.5 --- Current Online User Querying --- p.43 / Chapter 5.4 --- Lecture Functionality Issue --- p.44 / Chapter 5.5 --- Personal Scheduling Functionality Issue --- p.45 / Chapter 5.6 --- Collaboration Functionality Issue --- p.50 / Chapter 5.6.1 --- Chatting Room --- p.50 / Chapter 5.6.2 --- Discussion Board --- p.56 / Chapter 5.6.3 --- Personal URL-bookmark Keeping and Sharing --- p.57 / Chapter 6 --- Web-based Learning Scheduler (WL-Scheduler) --- p.59 / Chapter 6.1 --- "Web-based Customized Timetabling Problem, WCTP" --- p.60 / Chapter 6.2 --- Solution Approach - Local Search --- p.61 / Chapter 6.3 --- Algorithm for Approaching Feasible Timetables --- p.63 / Chapter 6.4 --- Evaluating The Best Timetable --- p.66 / Chapter 7 --- Multimedia Web Presentation System (MWPS) --- p.67 / Chapter 7.1 --- Overview --- p.67 / Chapter 7.2 --- System Components --- p.68 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- The MWPS Server Machine --- p.69 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- The MWPS Client Machine --- p.69 / Chapter 7.2.3 --- The Student Machine --- p.69 / Chapter 7.3 --- Presentation Flow --- p.69 / Chapter 7.4 --- Highlighed Features --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.1 --- Slides Sequence Capturing --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.2 --- Audio/Video Capturing --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.3 --- Script-Text On Playback --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.4 --- Student Feedbacking --- p.73 / Chapter 7.4.5 --- White Board Facility --- p.73 / Chapter 8 --- Illustration via Screen-shots --- p.74 / Chapter 8.1 --- Login Screen --- p.74 / Chapter 8.2 --- Functionality provided for Students --- p.75 / Chapter 8.2.1 --- Personalized Learning Timetable --- p.76 / Chapter 8.2.2 --- Lecture Delivery --- p.78 / Chapter 8.2.3 --- Checking active users in Virtual Campus --- p.78 / Chapter 8.2.4 --- View and Update Personal Information --- p.79 / Chapter 8.2.5 --- Taking An Entry Test for Interesting Subject --- p.81 / Chapter 8.2.6 --- Changing Current State --- p.84 / Chapter 8.2.7 --- Discussion Board --- p.84 / Chapter 8.2.8 --- Chatting Room --- p.85 / Chapter 8.3 --- Functionality provided for Teachers --- p.85 / Chapter 8.4 --- Functionality provided for Administrators --- p.92 / Chapter 9 --- Conclusion --- p.94 / Appendix --- p.106 / Chapter A --- Appendix --- p.106 / Chapter A.1 --- Internet Technology --- p.106 / Chapter A.2 --- Web Server --- p.107 / Chapter A.3 --- Web Client/Server Example --- p.108

by Wong, Wai Ching. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-94). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgments --- p.v / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Semistructured Data --- p.2 / Chapter 1.2 --- Problem Addressed in the Thesis --- p.4 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- Labels and Values --- p.4 / Chapter 1.2.2 --- Discover Labels for the Same Attribute --- p.5 / Chapter 1.2.3 --- Classifying A Web Page --- p.6 / Chapter 1.3 --- Organization of the Thesis --- p.8 / Chapter 2 --- Background --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- Related Work on Web Data --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Object Exchange Model (OEM) --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Schema Extraction --- p.11 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Discovering Typical Structure --- p.15 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Information Extraction of Web Data --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2 --- Automatic Text Processing --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Stopwords Elimination --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Stemming --- p.20 / Chapter 3 --- Web Data Definition --- p.22 / Chapter 3.1 --- Web Page --- p.22 / Chapter 3.2 --- Problem Description --- p.27 / Chapter 4 --- Hierarchical Structure --- p.32 / Chapter 4.1 --- Types of HTML Tags --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2 --- Tag-tree --- p.36 / Chapter 4.3 --- Hierarchical Structure Construction --- p.41 / Chapter 4.4 --- Hierarchical Structure Statistics --- p.50 / Chapter 5 --- Similar Labels Discovery --- p.53 / Chapter 5.1 --- Expression of Hierarchical Structure --- p.53 / Chapter 5.2 --- Labels Discovery Algorithm --- p.55 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Phase 1: Remove Non-label Nodes --- p.57 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Phase 2: Identify Label Nodes --- p.61 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Phase 3: Discover Similar Labels --- p.66 / Chapter 5.3 --- Performance Evaluation of Labels Discovery Algorithm --- p.76 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Phase 1 Results --- p.75 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Phase 2 Results --- p.77 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Phase 3 Results --- p.81 / Chapter 5.4 --- Classifying a Web Page --- p.83 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Similarity Measurement --- p.84 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Performance Evaluation --- p.86 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.89

by Kuo Yin-Hung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-97). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgments --- p.iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Web Document Classification --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2 --- Web Document Integration --- p.5 / Chapter 1.3 --- Dictionary and Incremental Update --- p.5 / Chapter 1.4 --- IR-Tree --- p.6 / Chapter 1.5 --- Thesis Overview --- p.7 / Chapter 2 --- Related Works --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1 --- Semi-structured Data and OEM --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Semi-structured Data --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Object Exchange Model --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2 --- Related Work on Web Document Partitioning --- p.11 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Retrieval of Authoritatives --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Document Categorization Methodology --- p.13 / Chapter 2.3 --- Semi-structured Data Indexing --- p.14 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Lore --- p.14 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Tsimmis --- p.15 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Other Algorithms --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4 --- Related Work on SAMs --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- R-Tree and R*-Tree --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- SS-Tree and SR-Tree --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- TV-Tree and X-Tree --- p.18 / Chapter 2.5 --- Clustering Algorithms --- p.18 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- DBSCAN and Incremental-DBSCAN --- p.20 / Chapter 3 --- Web Document Classification --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1 --- Basic Definitions --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2 --- Similarity Computation --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Structural Transformation --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Node Similarity --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Edge Label Similarity --- p.30 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Structural Similarity --- p.31 / Chapter 3.2.5 --- Overall Similarity --- p.32 / Chapter 3.2.6 --- Representative Selection --- p.33 / Chapter 3.3 --- Incremental Update --- p.34 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Documents related to a subset --- p.35 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Documents unrelated to any subset --- p.35 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Documents linking up two or more subsets --- p.35 / Chapter 3.4 --- Experimental Results --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Compare with K-NN --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Representative vs Feature Vector --- p.38 / Chapter 4 --- Web Document Integration --- p.40 / Chapter 4.1 --- Structure Borrowing --- p.40 / Chapter 4.2 --- Integration of Seeds --- p.42 / Chapter 4.3 --- Incremental Update --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- New OEM record is a normal record --- p.49 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- New record is a potential seed --- p.50 / Chapter 5 --- Dictionary --- p.51 / Chapter 5.1 --- Structure of a Dictionary Entry --- p.52 / Chapter 5.2 --- Dictionary: Relation Identifier --- p.54 / Chapter 5.3 --- Dictionary: Complement of Representative --- p.55 / Chapter 5.4 --- Incremental Update --- p.56 / Chapter 5.5 --- Experimental Result --- p.57 / Chapter 5.5.1 --- Search based on keyword --- p.57 / Chapter 5.5.2 --- Search by submitting ambiguous words --- p.58 / Chapter 5.5.3 --- Retrieval of related words --- p.59 / Chapter 6 --- Structured Data Manipulation: IR-Tree --- p.61 / Chapter 6.1 --- Range Search vs Nearest Neighbor Search --- p.61 / Chapter 6.2 --- Why R*-Tree and Incremental-DBSCAN? --- p.63 / Chapter 6.3 --- IR-Tree: The Integration of Clustering and Indexing --- p.64 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Index Structure --- p.64 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Insertion of IR-Tree --- p.66 / Chapter 6.3.3 --- Deletion on IR-tree --- p.68 / Chapter 6.3.4 --- Nearest Neighbor Search --- p.69 / Chapter 6.3.5 --- Discussion on IR-Tree --- p.73 / Chapter 6.4 --- Experimental Results --- p.73 / Chapter 6.4.1 --- General knn-search performance --- p.74 / Chapter 6.4.2 --- Performance on Varying Dimensionality and Distribution --- p.76 / Chapter 7 --- IM-Tree: An Review --- p.80 / Chapter 7.1 --- Indexing Techniques on Metric Space --- p.80 / Chapter 7.1.1 --- Definition --- p.81 / Chapter 7.1.2 --- Metric Space Indexing Algorithms --- p.81 / Chapter 7.2 --- Clustering Algorithms on Metric Space --- p.83 / Chapter 7.3 --- The Integration of Clustering and Metric-Space Indexing Algorithm --- p.84 / Chapter 7.4 --- Proposed Algorithm --- p.85 / Chapter 7.4.1 --- Index Structure --- p.85 / Chapter 7.4.2 --- Nearest Neighbor Search --- p.86 / Chapter 7.5 --- Future Works --- p.86 / Chapter 8 --- Conclusion and Future Works --- p.87 / Chapter 8.1 --- Semi-structured Data Manipulation --- p.88 / Chapter 8.2 --- Structured Data Manipulation --- p.89

En el diseño de aplicaciones web, la usabilidad tiene relación con la facilidad de uso de los sitios web, así como la capacidad de que los usuarios puedan interactuar con el mismo de una forma práctica, útil y sencilla. Para desarrollar una aplicación altamente usable, se tiene que enfocar el diseño en el usuario. El presente trabajo de investigación muestra el rediseño de un sistema desarrollado en Access para una institución. Al terminar el rediseño se obtuvo una aplicación web que supera los problemas presentados con el sistema antiguo. El rediseño se desarrolló tomando como base la norma ISO 13407 que se enfoca en el diseño centrado en el usuario. Se utilizó sus etapas como identificar las necesidades, comprender y especificar el contexto de uso, especificar los requisitos referentes al usuario y a la organización, producir soluciones de diseño, evaluar los diseños respecto a los requisitos y probar si el sistema satisface los requisitos especificados del usuario. El principal resultado que se obtuvo fue una aplicación web centrada en el usuario. Esta aplicación contiene tres módulos: Matrículas, pagos e investigación. La aplicación web no solo muestra la interacción y ubicación de sus elementos de manera adecuada, sino permite realizar con mucha más rapidez y eficiencia el trabajo diario. Además, luego de realizar la evaluación del sistema y con resultados estadísticos obtenidos, se puede afirmar que: La aplicación web se percibe como más fácil de usar que la aplicación Access, la aplicación web se percibe como más útil que la aplicación Access y que la aplicación web tiene mejor intención de ser utilizado que la aplicación Access. Al terminar este trabajo de investigación podemos decir que el sistema web desarrollado mejora las áreas de trabajo de la institución / Tesis

Yue Che Wang, Kenneth. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-106). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Abstract (Chinese) --- p.iv / Acknowledgement --- p.vi / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- The World-Wide Web --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Searching Information on the WWW --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Intelligent content-based information discovery on the Web --- p.4 / Chapter 1.4 --- Organization of the Thesis --- p.7 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1 --- Search Engines --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2 --- Information Indexing Systems --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3 --- Agent-based Systems --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- Information Filtering Systems --- p.16 / Chapter 3 --- Overview of the Proposed Approach --- p.20 / Chapter 3.1 --- System Architecture --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2 --- Topic Profile Specification --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3 --- Text Representation --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Profile Feature Representation --- p.30 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Document Feature Representation --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4 --- Advantages of the Topic Profile Specifications --- p.34 / Chapter 4 --- Relevance Score Evaluation Process and Relevance Feedback Model --- p.36 / Chapter 4.1 --- Term Weights --- p.37 / Chapter 4.2 --- Document Evaluation through Relevance Score --- p.39 / Chapter 4.3 --- Learning via Relevance Feedback --- p.42 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Introduction to Relevance Feedback --- p.43 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Feature Extraction from the Relevance Feedback Models --- p.44 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Topic Feature Vectors Refinement --- p.49 / Chapter 5 --- Intelligent Web Exploration --- p.51 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction to Simulated Annealing --- p.51 / Chapter 5.2 --- Intelligent Web Exploration by Simulated Annealing --- p.54 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Mathematical Setting of the Discovery Process --- p.57 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- The Entire Exploration Algorithm --- p.58 / Chapter 5.3 --- Incorporating with the Relevance Feedback Model --- p.60 / Chapter 6 --- Experimental Results --- p.61 / Chapter 6.1 --- The Design of the Experiments --- p.61 / Chapter 6.2 --- Experiments on the Effects of the Simulated Annealing Schedule upon the Discovery Precision --- p.65 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Experiment Setup --- p.66 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Results --- p.66 / Chapter 6.3 --- Experiments on the Index Page Topic Profile Specification --- p.72 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Experiment Setup --- p.72 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Results --- p.73 / Chapter 6.4 --- Experiments on the Relevance Feedback with Full-Text Feature Extraction Strategy --- p.75 / Chapter 6.4.1 --- Experiment Setup --- p.75 / Chapter 6.4.2 --- Results --- p.76 / Chapter 6.5 --- Comparisons of the Relevance Feedback Feature Extraction Strate- gies --- p.78 / Chapter 6.5.1 --- Experiment Setup --- p.78 / Chapter 6.5.2 --- Results --- p.79 / Chapter 6.6 --- Comparisons between the Example Page and the Keyword Topic Profile Specifications --- p.82 / Chapter 6.6.1 --- Experiment Setup --- p.83 / Chapter 6.6.2 --- Results --- p.83 / Chapter 6.7 --- Summary from the Experimental Results --- p.87 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.91 / Chapter 7.1 --- The Aim of Our Proposed System --- p.91 / Chapter 7.2 --- The Favorable Features and the Effectiveness of Our Proposed System --- p.92 / Chapter 7.3 --- Future Work --- p.94 / Appendix --- p.96 / Chapter A --- List of URLs for the Example Pages --- p.96 / Chapter B --- List of URLs for the Arbitrarily Chosen Index Pages --- p.98 / Bibliography --- p.100

No description available.

Diet and lifestyle have changed dramatically in the last few decades, leading to an increase in prevalence of obesity, defined as a body mass index >30Kg/m2, dyslipidaemias (defined as abnormal lipid profiles) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Together, these cardiometabolic traits and diseases, have contributed to the increased burden of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in Western societies. Complex traits and diseases, such as cardiometabolic traits, arise as a result of the interaction between an individual's predisposing genetic makeup and a permissive environment. Since 2007, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been successfully applied to complex traits leading to the discovery of thousands of trait-associated variants. Nonetheless, much is still to be understood regarding the genetic architecture of these traits, as well as their underlying biology. This thesis aims to further explore the genetic architecture of cardiometabolic traits by using complementary approaches with greater genetic and phenotype resolution, ranging from studying clinically ascertained extreme phenotypes, deep molecular profiling, or sequence level data. In chapter 2, I investigated the genetic architecture of healthy human thinness (N=1,471) and contrasted it to that of severe early onset childhood obesity (N=1,456). I demonstrated that healthy human thinness, like severe obesity, is a heritable trait, with a polygenic component. I identified a novel BMI-associated locus at PKHD1, and found evidence of association at several loci that had only been discovered using large cohorts with >40,000 individuals demonstrating the power gains in studying clinical extreme phenotypes. In chapter 3, I coupled high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements in healthy blood donors, with next-generation sequencing to establish the role of rare coding variation in circulating metabolic biomarker biology. In gene-based analysis, I identified ACSL1, MYCN, FBXO36 and B4GALNT3 as novel gene-trait associations (P < 2.5x10-6). I also found a novel link between loss-of-function mutations in the "regulation of the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) complex" pathway and intermediate-density lipoprotein (IDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and circulating cholesterol measurements. In addition, I demonstrated that rare "protective" variation in lipoprotein metabolism genes was present in the lower tails of four measurements which are CVD risk factors in this healthy population, demonstrating a role for rare coding variation and the extremes of healthy phenotypes. In chapter 4, I performed a genome-wide association study of fructosamine, a measurement of total serum protein glycation which is useful to monitor rapid changes in glycaemic levels after treatment, as it reflects average glycaemia over 2-3 weeks. In contrast to HbA1c, which reflects average glucose concentration over the life-span of the erythrocyte (~3 months), fructosamine levels are not predicted to be influenced by factors affecting the erythrocyte. Surprisingly, I found that in this dataset fructosamine had low heritability (2% vs 20% for HbA1c), and was poorly correlated with HbA1c and other glycaemic traits. Despite this, I found two loci previously associated with glycaemic or albumin traits, G6PC2 and FCGRT respectively (P < 5x10-8), associated with fructosamine suggesting shared genetic influence. Altogether my results demonstrate the utility of higher resolution genotype and phenotype data in further elucidating the genetic architecture of a range of cardiometabolic traits, and the power advantages of study designs that focus on individuals at the extremes of phenotype distribution. As large cohorts and national biobanks with sequencing and deep multi-dimensional phenotyping become more prevalent, we will be moving closer to understanding the multiple aetiological mechanisms leading to CVD, and subsequently improve diagnosis and treatment of these conditions.