Modern architecture is a creation of the West. In a non-Western context, it normally reflects a direct intervention of Western powers through colonization. Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is an exception. Thai people have argued that they adopted and assimilated modern architecture into their unique cultural tradition without being physically colonized. The shift toward Western culture and Modernity is evident in 19th and 20th century Thai architecture, particularly in the capitol city of Bangkok. Major public buildings signify the country's domestic political circumstances, its Westernization and Modernization processes, in addition to the discourse of colonialism and anti-colonialism. Many of the best-known works resulted in hybrids between European a...

This praxis-based book explores how an improvisational, creative and embodied practice such as the dérive works to defamiliarise our experience of the late modern built environment, fostering new insight into routinised cultural behaviours. In addition to detailing the key contexts of modernity, this book includes case studies on the work of Viktor Shklovsky, Craig Raine, Georges Perec, plus rare scholarly attention to the postcards of Jim Henson’s Uncle Traveling Matt. Tertiary students and early career researchers in the humanities, particularly cultural theory and the creative arts, will read about the work of internationally recognised artists who have responded creatively to the urban landscape in view of its habituation under advanced capitalism. The research aims to provide s...

This thesis introduces Tadao Ando, a well-known Japanese architect, who is currently working on an emerging concept in the discourse of architecture, and is opening an approach of high sensibility (sensual, reflective, flexible, and complex, sensitively matching with every moment of life) and conceptualism (rational, logically approaching truth) that is widely considered one of the most important ways of thinking and designing architecture.In the introduction chapter, Tadao Ando's is introduced as a master of architecture and as a critic. Secondly, his goals, objectives, concepts and strategies are outlined. These aspects are grouped and developed into major themes. Those themes will later be interpreted in Chapter Four.In the second chapter of the thesis, the architecture of Tadao Ando i...

This book was written with the novice or intermediate 8052 developer in mind. Assuming no prior knowledge of the 8052, it takes the reader step-by-step through the architecture including discussions and explanations of concepts such as internal RAM, external RAM, Special Function Registers (SFRs), addressing modes, timers, serial I/O, and interrupts. This is followed by an in-depth section on assembly language which explains each instruction in the 8052 instruction set as well as related concepts such as assembly language syntax, expressions, assembly language directives, and how to implement 16-bit mathematical functions. The book continues with a thorough explanation of the 8052 hardware itself, reviewing the function of each pin on the microcontroller and follows this with the design ...

Megalithism, or the art of using huge boulders to create sacred, pagan monuments and sites, still fascinates us today. How did Prehistoric man cut, transport, and place such enormous stones, some weighing up to 200 metric tons, without bulldozers, drills, and cranes? Yet primitive man, without the written word or wheel, created structures which still stupefy us in the 21st century, both due to their components and the precision used in positioning them. This book takes us back in time to the 5th-2nd millennia B.C. and helps us visualise the Stone Age world and its constructions - menhirs, dolmens, rows and circles of standing stones. Undoubtedly they were sacred places, used for pagan rituals and funerary purposes, but the author also gives us details of their astronomic and physical...

The modern FPGAs enable system designers to develop high-performance computing (HPC) applications with a large amount of parallelism. Real-time image processing is such a requirement that demands much more processing power than a conventional processor can deliver. In this research, we implemented software and hardware based architectures on FPGA to achieve real-time image processing. Furthermore, we benchmark and compare our implemented architectures with existing architectures. The operational structures of those systems consist of on-chip processors or custom vision coprocessors implemented in a parallel manner with efficient memory and bus architectures. The performance properties such as the accuracy, throughput and efficiency are measured and presented. According to results, FPGA ...

This book attempts to look at the structure and functions of the constituent elements of the Ghuriyya complex through the medium of contemporary sources --in particular its waqfiyya--and in doing so, the motives and attitudes of the patron, his goals and his ambitions are defined. In addition, the study seeks to place the monuments in broader context and examine them within the more extended social, economic, political, and cultural environment of al- Ghuri’s reign. This book will be of considerable interest to academics and students working on the history of art and architecture, history, culture and urbanism of the Middle East. Its subject is the expressive intent of Mamluk architecture, using new cultural and iconographical approaches. The book offers the first complete English transl...

Trends and perspectives in dynamic environments point towards a need for optimal operating levels in reconfigurable manufacturing activities. Central to the goal of meeting this need is the issue of appropriate techniques for manufacturing process planning optimization in reconfigurable manufacturing, i.e. (i) what decision making models and (ii) what computational techniques, provide an optimal manufacturing process planning solution in a multidimensional decision variables space? Conventional optimization techniques are not robust, hence; they are not suitable for handling multidimensional search spaces. On the other hand, process planning optimization for reconfigurable manufacturing is not amenable to classical modeling approaches due to the presence of complex system dynamics. Therefo...

This dissertation introduces new hardware architectures for more realistic surface rendering of three dimensional objects and the rendering of volumetric datasets. Surface rendering is dealt with in the first part of the dissertation where the architectures for displacement map rendering in hardware are proposed. This work represents the first to appear in scientific literature on displacement map hardware rendering. Where possible these architectures propose components that integrate into currently available pipelines and make use of existing units in those pipelines. Displacement map rendering in hardware is a desired feature currently under development by most graphics hardware vendors. The first architecture is scan-line based and works just before rasterization and the second adaptiv...

More than ten years ago, when I first read Mario Gandelsonas’ book The Urban Context, the beautiful abstract diagrams that the book presented -the street network of Chicago- fascinated me with the profound historical and cultural background that they suggested. Without knowing how this would direct me, I started to draw something related with the street network of Beijing. That is the beginning of this book. Among tons of the diagrams that I have created, most of them have not been incorporated into this book, while they have directed me into this fascinating research area which focuses on the "mineralized skeleton," rather than the "soft tissue" of urban forms. It was not until the recent five years when Yang and I came across some theories and approaches in paleontology that we start...

Auditory and visual speech recognition unfolds in real time and occurs effortlessly for normal hearing listeners. However, model theoretic descriptions of the systems level cognitive processes responsible for integrating auditory and visual speech information are currently lacking, primarily because they rely too heavily on accuracy rather than reaction time predictions. Speech and language researchers have argued about whether audiovisual integration occurs in a parallel or in coactive fashion, and also the extent to which audiovisual occurs in an efficient manner. The Double Factorial Paradigm introduced in Section 1 is an experimental paradigm that is equipped to address dynamical processing issues related to architecture (parallel vs. coactive processing) as well as efficiency (capacit...

The examination and interpretation of tissue sections seen under the light microscope in a laboratory setting is an example of student-directed, independent problem solving. The proper reading of a histologic section is an acquired art that can only be developed through practice, close observation and repetition. This laboratory manual was designed as a guide for students to aid them in this endeavor. The laboratory study guide/manual was designed to be used as a supplement to any current textbook and/or atlas of Histology. Learning objectives provide the overall goals for each chapter. The narrative of the study guide explains how to systematically breakdown, examine and interpret each tissue and/or organ encountered, without regard to a given histologic slide from a specific slide collec...

The Internet was designed for effective movement of data -accurate and complete- from any point to any other point. The communication protocols, technological foundation, and original governance of the Internet all worked toward this goal. In contrast, legal constraints on transmission of information often have the obverse objectives of limiting, controlling, or preventing this movement of content. This dissertation proposes that the fundamental architecture of the Internet must change in order to allow effective regulation and legal control of content on the Internet.

The problem of controlling sensory perception for use in discrete event feedback control systems is addressed in this thesis. The sensory perception controller (SPC) is formulated as a sequential Markov decision problem. The SPC has two main objectives; 1) to collect perceptual information to identify discrete events with high levels of confidence and 2) to keep the sensing costs low. Several event recognition techniques are available where each of the event recognisers produces confidence levels of recognised events. For a discrete event control system running in normal operation, the confidence levels are typically large and only a few event recognisers are needed. Then, as the event recognition becomes harder, the confidence levels will decrease and additional event recognisers are uti...

Modern biology is increasingly focused on the role of repetitive anatomical structures in the embryological construction of organisms. The discovery of the homeobox (Hox) genes by Edward Lewis in 1978 ushered in a series of stunning revelations such as the fundamental commonality of insect segments and mammalian vertebrae – a wild and ridiculed idea first proposed by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1822 that has now been proven correct. Axial Character Seriation in Mammals is an unabridged edition of the 1986 Harvard University PhD Thesis of Aaron G. Filler, MD, PhD that pioneered our modern reassessment of mammalian vertebrae in the light of the new homeotic biology. As Dr. Filler points out in fascinating detail, the leading explanations of similarity among animals before Darwin wer...

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is the basic network architecture for Next Generation Networks (NGN) which is intended to bridge the divide between the traditional circuit switched and packet switched networks, thereby providing a single network capable of providing all service offerings. IMS is based on the IP infrastructure and it enables the convergence of data, speech and video on the same network platform. The IMS forms the basis of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), where fixed-line operators are striving to provide mobile access and mobile operators are trying to provide fixed access. This is done to provide both services to a customer in a single device. The IMS is based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is a text-based protocol. The IMS will generally create additional...

In this thesis we advance the state-of the practice in the Space Mission Operations domain by leveraging single spacecraft technologies along with classical scheduling frameworks and notation to create a scheduler for a constellation of spacecraft. We define a scheduling product that is focused on the problem of scheduling networked groups of spacecraft, called constellations. Within this thesis we show that the constellation schedule problem is a very complex problem, and the application of heuristics is one approach that allow us to schedule successfully. Our first objective, comprising chapters 1, 2, and 3, is to describe the spacecraft constellation domain and the objectives of the thesis. This background provides a foundation for understanding the constellation scheduling problem doma...

Many people believe in the power of positive thinking (i.e., how thoughts and attitude can shape their future) yet, despite a plethora of books on this subject, no previous author has credibly explained how mere thoughts are able to tangibly influence future events. To explain the connection, Dr. Donlan presents a new paradigm of nature coupled with a viable explanation of how our right cerebral hemisphere has evolved circuitry that can tap into the hidden domain of the metaphysical. To support this premise, he exposes the reader to the worlds of physics, metaphysics, brain architecture, and evolution. Donlan then introduces the many problems associated with the current model and contrasts it with a new view which remedies many of the issues facing theoretical physicists today. Important t...

The book has been structured into three parts, namely, Analytical Meditation, The Death of Diseases: Psychological Vaccination, Communication with the Heart: The Utterances that Provide Energy, and The Architecture of the Mind: The Psychology of Spirituality. The entire approach is founded on the concept of the combination of Analysis (or self-enquiry), Meditation, Self-Hypnosis, and Prayer and is expected to simultaneously work on the different dimensions of the mind –emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and behavioral. It is expected, as hundreds of the author’s readers have reported to have experienced, that the method will work instantly on the mind, without the reader’s having to do any special mental exercise as is typical of most meditation practices.

This thesis dissertation, written in Spanish, presents a new model for the linguistic specification and the computational management of man-machine dialogues following commands issued in spoken natural language. Our aim is to design and implement a conversational system for the automatic telephone task scenario, namely Delfos. Voice dialing represents a current trend in research, the purpose of which is to provide functional systems for products ranging from domestic appliances such as a video or a washing machine to more sophisticated environments such as a complete house, with an interface in spoken natural language. Our system, Delfos, represents a challenge for the fields of Language Engineering and Computational Linguistics as it implies the integration of different technologies such...

Written by an architect with many years' experience in practice and teaching, this book is a well-illustrated introduction to the great range of materials used in much of the world's building and construction. It is the only book of its type on the market, and suitable for anyone teaching or studying for building trades, architecture, building, landscape design, structural engineering, and allied disciplines. When first published, a reviewer commented, "This book has filled a large gap in publications available to both students and the building professions." The Fourth (2009) Edition is now available, incorporating many references to current standard codes, research, manufacturers, and other authoritative information on the internet, to expand content further if needed.

This books aims at analyzing Turkish foreign and security policies in the 21st century. Turkey’s foreign and security policies have become the focus of academic discussions since Turkey is located in the middle of the most unstable region in the world. Turkey’s self-assured foreign policy has similarly attracted the attention of academicians worldwide. Meanwhile, Turkey’s security policy has also been the subject of discussions as the country has been struggling with ethnic terrorism for 35 years. Furthermore, the US invasion of Iraq and the recent Syrian civil war, along with other factors, have caused religious radicalism to expand its power throughout the Middle East, which has heavily impacted on Turkey’s security. Turkey’s longstanding problems with its neighbors have also a...

Humanity is a species in rapid transition. However, the progress being made is not uniform. There is a growing chasm between belief and knowledge that might never be breached. In the area of technology, we are building machines that increasingly take on the ability to reason, we are on the threshold of moving out into space and beginning to engineer life. Now, the very foundations of fundamental existence have been discovered and a new system, unifying the complete range of physics, has been developed. However, humanity may not be able to advance much beyond where we are today, our progress having been cut short by the savagery, ignorance and irrationality maintained within populations. The Pathology of Cultural Delusion announces the new discovery of the foundations of existence...

Debris disks are optically thin circumstellar disks around mainsequence stars, comprised of micron-sized grains. The dust is generated from destructive collisions of planetesimals, induced from gravitational perturbations by large planets. Debris disks can as signposts for planetary systems, through which, a universal picture can be obtained that encompasses the evolution and architecture of the Solar System’s own dust disk and planetary system. The dust in these disks can be detected by their thermal infrared flux, measured as an excess above the photospheric emission. Dust at different circumstellar locations, inferred from the peak wavelength of the detected emission, can act as a probe for local dynamical activity in the system. Over the last thirty years, cold disks, analogous to th...

This is a detailed reader's guide to James Joyce's masterwork Ulysses, voted the most important novel of the 20th century. The guide provides episode by episode an in depth explanation of the action and symbolism, including a description of the related books of Homer's Odyssey and the correspondences. This guide is designed to give the user the keys to the kingdom of one of the wonders of Western civilization. The non-academic author, a retired lawyer and life long Joyce reader, brings new approaches to find the deep meaning of each of Joyce's episodes and the novel as a whole. The scope of this effort, the complete Joyce, is unique in an area monopolized by more narrowly focused academics. The analysis elucidates Joyce's technique to mimic patterns in history and nature in his arch...

This dissertation introduces a new design for a computer-aided algorithmic music composition system. Rather than exploring specific algorithms, this study focuses on system and component design. The design introduced here is demonstrated through its implementation in athenaCL, a modular, polyphonic, poly-paradigm algorithmic music composition system in a cross-platform interactive command-line environment. The athenaCL system offers an open-source, object-oriented composition tool written in Python. The system can be scripted and embedded, and includes integrated instrument libraries, post-tonal and microtonal pitch modeling tools, multiple-format graphical outputs, and musical output in Csound, MIDI, audio file, XML, and text formats. Software design analysis is framed within a broad his...

Almost from the very beginning of the digital age, people have sought better ways to communicate with computers. This research investigates how computers might be enabled to understand natural language in a more humanlike way. Based, in part, on cognitive development in infants, we introduce an open computational framework for visual perception and grounded language acquisition called Experience-Based Language Acquisition (EBLA). EBLA can watch a series of short videos and acquire a simple language of nouns and verbs corresponding to the objects and object-object relations in those videos. Upon acquiring this protolanguage, EBLA can perform basic scene analysis to generate descriptions of novel videos.The general architecture of EBLA is comprised of three stages: vision processing, entit...

Due to recent climate change, the character of environmental regional planning has shifted to address the anticipated extreme increases in sea level rise. As such, this project, based on existing scientific research/data, proposes a spatial, habitable landscape architectural solution as a model for flood mitigation for the East coastal edge. This proposal tests the potential for resilient coastal landscapes through a particular site located on Revere Beach, along with the New England coast in Massachusetts. The study demonstrates how through new public spaces designed to renew and protect the beach and the broader offshores, residents and visitors will be able to engage with this 21st Century, resilient beachfront. Also, residents and visitors will experience sophisticated efficient flood ...

A collection of papers from the Egyptologists' Electronic Forum (http://welcome.to/EEF) on a variety of Egyptological topics, of interest to both professionals and laypersons. Five broad themes may be discerned: royalty in ancient Egypt, scarabs and funerary items, archaeology and early Egypt, Egyptology -- past, present and future, and ancient Egyptian language, science and religion. Table of Contents Preface Lorton, David - The Institution of Kingship in Ancient Egypt Gaber, Amr - Aspects of the Deification of Some Old Kingdom Kings Rocchi, Federico - The First Prophet of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten Kramer, Arris - Enigmatic Kiya Bennett, Chris - Three Notes on Arsinoe I Sarr, John - The Gayer-Anderson Amenhotep III Commemorative Scarabs in the Portland Art Museum: Their Discovery...

The strategy team have technology ideas and frameworks that represent the best body of knowledge for creating real business value from technology, but only other teams not the strategy team can create the value, by broadly completing the strategy team s ideas. The delivery teams often ignore the ideas. Sometimes real conflict emerges. It feels like the other teams think differently in a deeply rooted way. Could differences in organisational culture be to blame? This dissertation examines the organisational culture perceived within BP's energy trading technology team known as Integrated Supply and Trading Digital Business (ISTDB). The focus is on the Strategy and Architecture team (S&A) who are responsible for assuring the long-term viability of technology delivered to the business by ...