Long limited to universities and very-high-income firms, interest in computer-aided drafting and design has been growing rapidly among smaller architectural practices. Pressure exerted by clients and peers, as well as the promise of better design capabilities and faster design cycles, has fuelled the integration of CAD into architectural practice. / This thesis investigates the implications of CAD acquisition and integration through an analysis of the changes experienced by firms which have acquired this technology. We will look at the effects of CAD on office organization, staff, drawings and models and the design process. We will examine CAD as a means of replacing and surpassing traditional methods of representation and documentation, and consider its impact on the managerial aspects of professional practice. / Although this study is not exhaustive, it can serve the architect as a primer for a better understanding of the use of computers and their impact on architectural practice.

In this thesis we investigate the two cosmic epochs of inflation and recombination, through their imprints on the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation. To probe the early universe we develop a map-based maximum-likelihood estimator to measure the amplitude of inflation-induced gravity waves, parametrized by $r$, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization maps. Being optimal by construction, the estimator avoids $E$-$B$ mixing, a possible source of contamination in the tiny $B$-mode detection, the target of many current and near future CMB experiments. For various observational cases, we probe the dependence of $r$ measurement on the signal from different scales of $E$ and $B$ polarization. We make forecasts for Spider-like and Planck-like experimental specifications and to investigate the sky-coverage optimization of the Spider-like case. We also use a novel information-based framework to compare how different generations of CMB experiments reveal information about the early universe, through their measurements of $r$. We also probe the epoch of recombination by investigating possible fluctuations in the free electron fraction $\Xe$ around the fiducial model of the standard recombination scenario. Though theoretically well studied, the detailed assumptions in the recombination history, based on standard atomic physics, have never been directly tested. However, for our CMB-based cosmological inferences to be reliable, the recombination scenario needs to be observationally verified. We approach this problem in a model-independent way and construct rank-ordered parameter eigen-modes with the highest power to probe $\Xe$. We develop an information-based criterion to truncate the eigen-mode hierarchy, which can be used in similar hierarchical model selections as well. The method is applied to simulations of Planck+ACTPol and a cosmic variance limited survey with differing simulated recombination histories and recovered $\Xe$ trajectories are constructed. We apply the method to currently available CMB datasets, WMAP9+ACT/SPT. The first constructed eigen-mode turns out to be a direct measure of the damping envelope. Its current measurement with SPT slightly indicates a damping tail anomaly, while ACT data agree well with the standard scenario. High resolution Planck data will resolve this tension with high significance.

In this thesis we investigate the two cosmic epochs of inflation and recombination, through their imprints on the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation. To probe the early universe we develop a map-based maximum-likelihood estimator to measure the amplitude of inflation-induced gravity waves, parametrized by $r$, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization maps. Being optimal by construction, the estimator avoids $E$-$B$ mixing, a possible source of contamination in the tiny $B$-mode detection, the target of many current and near future CMB experiments. For various observational cases, we probe the dependence of $r$ measurement on the signal from different scales of $E$ and $B$ polarization. We make forecasts for Spider-like and Planck-like experimental specifications and to investigate the sky-coverage optimization of the Spider-like case. We also use a novel information-based framework to compare how different generations of CMB experiments reveal information about the early universe, through their measurements of $r$. We also probe the epoch of recombination by investigating possible fluctuations in the free electron fraction $\Xe$ around the fiducial model of the standard recombination scenario. Though theoretically well studied, the detailed assumptions in the recombination history, based on standard atomic physics, have never been directly tested. However, for our CMB-based cosmological inferences to be reliable, the recombination scenario needs to be observationally verified. We approach this problem in a model-independent way and construct rank-ordered parameter eigen-modes with the highest power to probe $\Xe$. We develop an information-based criterion to truncate the eigen-mode hierarchy, which can be used in similar hierarchical model selections as well. The method is applied to simulations of Planck+ACTPol and a cosmic variance limited survey with differing simulated recombination histories and recovered $\Xe$ trajectories are constructed. We apply the method to currently available CMB datasets, WMAP9+ACT/SPT. The first constructed eigen-mode turns out to be a direct measure of the damping envelope. Its current measurement with SPT slightly indicates a damping tail anomaly, while ACT data agree well with the standard scenario. High resolution Planck data will resolve this tension with high significance.

No description available.

No description available.

As far back as Euclid's ruler and compass constructions, computation and geometry have been domains for the exploration and development of fundamental mathematical concepts and ideas. The invention of computers has spurred new research in computation, and now with a variety of applications couched in the fundamentals of Euclidean geometry, the study of geometric algorithms has again become a popular mathematical pursuit. / In this thesis, the computational aspects of a fundamental problem in Euclidean geometry is examined. Given a set of line segments in the Euclidean plane, one is asked to connect all the segments to form a simple closed circuit. It is shown that for some sets of line segments it is impossible to perform this task. The problem of deciding whether a set of line segments admits a simple circuit is proved to be NP-complete. A restriction of the class of permissible input allows a polynomial time solution to the simple circuit decision problem. It is also shown that a polynomial solution can be realized by restricting the class of simple circuit in the output. All the polynomial time decision algorithms exhibited deliver a simple circuit if one exists. Furthermore, in all cases the simple circuit obtained can be optimized with respect to area or perimeter.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-98). / viii, 98 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Facilitated by the technological advances of the last decades, increasing amounts of complex data are being collected within fields such as biology, chemistry and social sciences. The major challenge today is not to gather data, but to extract useful information and gain insights from it. Information visualization provides methods for visual analysis of complex data but, as the amounts of gathered data increase, the challenges of visual analysis become more complex. This thesis presents work utilizing algorithmically extracted patterns as guidance during interactive data exploration processes, employing information visualization techniques. It provides efficient analysis by taking advantage of fast pattern identification techniques as well as making use of the domain expertise of the analyst. In particular, the presented research is concerned with the issues of analysing categorical data, where the values are names without any inherent order or distance; mixed data, including a combination of categorical and numerical data; and high dimensional data, including hundreds or even thousands of variables. The contributions of the thesis include a quantification method, assigning numerical values to categorical data, which utilizes an automated method to define category similarities based on underlying data structures, and integrates relationships within numerical variables into the quantification when dealing with mixed data sets. The quantification is incorporated in an interactive analysis pipeline where it provides suggestions for numerical representations, which may interactively be adjusted by the analyst. The interactive quantification enables exploration using commonly available visualization methods for numerical data. Within the context of categorical data analysis, this thesis also contributes the first user study evaluating the performance of what are currently the two main visualization approaches for categorical data analysis. Furthermore, this thesis contributes two dimensionality reduction approaches, which aim at preserving structure while reducing dimensionality, and provide flexible and user-controlled dimensionality reduction. Through algorithmic quality metric analysis, where each metric represents a structure of interest, potentially interesting variables are extracted from the high dimensional data. The automatically identified structures are visually displayed, using various visualization methods, and act as guidance in the selection of interesting variable subsets for further analysis. The visual representations furthermore provide overview of structures within the high dimensional data set and may, through this, aid in focusing subsequent analysis, as well as enabling interactive exploration of the full high dimensional data set and selected variable subsets. The thesis also contributes the application of algorithmically guided approaches for high dimensional data exploration in the rapidly growing field of microbiology, through the design and development of a quality-guided interactive system in collaboration with microbiologists.

Thesis (PhD) -- University of South Australia, 1999