A Study on the Characterization of Hagar Shipley

The Stone Angel, the first novel of the Manawaka Cycle, is generally regarded as Laurence’s representative work. This novel narrates the story of Hagar Shipley, who struggles to search for her self-identity and freedom all through her life. Hagar’s life reflects Canadian ideology and ideological trends during that specific period. Hagar’s pride leads to her rebellious life. She seems like the sightless stone angel in the Manawaka cemetery. She cannot realize her pride and prejudice. She cannot understand people around her. People cannot understand her either. Hagar doesn’t achieve her self-identity and spiritual freedom until the very end of her life. This thesis intends to analyze the characterization of Hagar and her inner journey towards self-identity and freedom, and further to evaluate Laurence’s contribution to Canadian Literature

On the Uniqueness of Balanced Complex Orthogonal Design

Complex orthogonal designs (CODs) play a crucial role in the construction of space-time block codes. Their real analog, real orthogonal designs (or equivalently, sum of squares composition formula) have a long history. Adams et al. (2011) introduced the concept of balanced complex orthogonal designs (BCODs) to address practical considerations. BCODs have a constant code rate of $1/2$ and a minimum decoding delay of $2^m$, where $2m$ is the number of columns. Understanding the structure of BCODs helps design space-time block codes, and it is also fascinating in its own right. We prove, when the number of columns is fixed, all (indecomposable) balanced complex orthogonal designs (BCODs) have the same parameters $[2^m, 2m, 2^{m-1}]$, and moreover, they are all equivalent

Message Passing Based Block Sparse Signal Recovery for DOA Estimation Using Large Arrays

This work deals with directional of arrival (DOA) estimation with a large antenna array. We first develop a novel signal model with a sparse system transfer matrix using an inverse discrete Fourier transform (DFT) operation, which leads to the formulation of a structured block sparse signal recovery problem with a sparse sensing matrix. This enables the development of a low complexity message passing based Bayesian algorithm with a factor graph representation. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method

Digital Platform Strategies and Profitability—The Role of Strategy Type and Chief Digital Officers

While companies in the IT industry—particularly the big tech companies—have profited from digital platform strategies, whether companies across industries also benefit from such strategies remains contested. Focusing on the S&P1500 companies, we show that digital platform strategies positively affect a company’s profitability, albeit after a lag of several years. To further explore the relationship between digital platform strategies and profitability, we considered the impact of the type of digital platform strategy and the presence of a chief digital officer (CDO). First, the positive effect of a digital platform strategy is stronger for companies that implement the digital platform organically ( build strategy ) rather than for companies that acquire a platform ( buy strategy ). Second, the presence of a CDO positively moderates the effect of digital platform strategy in the long but not in the short run. Overall, implementing digital plat- forms is not a quick-win strategy for companies, but it requires careful consideration

Understanding the Role of Commitments in Explaining P2P Lending Investing Willingness: Antecedents and Consequences

As a relatively new e-commerce phenomenon, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has the potential to thoroughly change the structure of the loan segment in the financial industry. And the success of P2P lending heavily depend on users’ continuous use. However, this topic has not been fully studied in IS research. The high practical significance and lack of research indicate the importance of the present study. This study aims to apply Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of commitment to construct a research model, which incorporates context-specific antecedents. To test the model, we use a survey of 216 actual lenders of the P2P lending platform in China. Results derived from data indicated that lenders’ continuous investments were jointly determined by continuous commitment and affective commitment. Further, platform assurance, trust on third-party, economic feasibility and quality of alternatives performed well as antecedents of continuous commitment. And perceived critical mass and platform assurance were significantly associated with affective commitment. The results of this research provided theoretical implications for future research and practical implications for the success of P2P lending platforms

Photon-noise limited sensitivity in titanium nitride kinetic inductance detectors

We demonstrate photon-noise limited performance at sub-millimeter wavelengths in feedhorn-coupled, microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) made of a TiN/Ti/TiN trilayer superconducting film, tuned to have a transition temperature of 1.4~K. Micro-machining of the silicon-on-insulator wafer backside creates a quarter-wavelength backshort optimized for efficient coupling at 250~\micron. Using frequency read out and when viewing a variable temperature blackbody source, we measure device noise consistent with photon noise when the incident optical power is $>$~0.5~pW, corresponding to noise equivalent powers $>$~3$\times 10^{-17}$ W/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$. This sensitivity makes these devices suitable for broadband photometric applications at these wavelengths

Side-channel Attacks with Multi-thread Mixed Leakage

Side-channel attacks are one of the greatest practical threats to security-related applications, because they are capable of breaking ciphers that are assumed to be mathematically secure. Lots of studies have been devoted to power or electro-magnetic (EM) analysis against desktop CPUs, mobile CPUs (including ARM, MSP, AVR, etc) and FPGAs, but rarely targeted modern GPUs. Modern GPUs feature their special and specific single instruction multiple threads (SIMT) execution fashion, which makes their power/EM leakage more sophisticated in practical scenarios. In this paper, we study side-channel attacks with leakage from SIMT systems, and propose leakage models suited to any SIMT systems and specifically to CUDA-enabled GPUs. Afterwards, we instantiate the models with a GPU AES implementation, which is also used for performance evaluations. In addition to the models, we provide optimizations on the attacks that are based on the models. To evaluate the models and optimizations, we run the GPU AES implementation on a CUDA-enabled GPU and, at the same time, collect its EM leakage. The experimental results show that the proposed models are more efficient and the optimizations are effective as well. Our study suggests that GPU-based cryptographic implementations may be much vulnerable to microarchitecture-based side-channel attacks. Therefore, GPU-specific countermeasures should be considered for GPU-based cryptographic implementations in practical applications

EXPLORING THE ROLE OF SWITCHING COSTS IN EXPLAINING MICRO-GROUP ADHERENCE FROM THE SOCIO-TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE

Micro-group is a commonly used function provided by most of China micro-blog platforms though which friends or people with common interests can share conversations like an online community. In this study, we draw from established socio-technical theory in Information Systems to develop an integrated model of customers’ adherence to micro-groups from the view of switching cost. The results of the empirical analysis confirmed that switching cost increases when the user perceived that the system was secure, full-functional or when there is a high level of network size, information value and network status. In the same way, greater switching cost was also found to have a positive influence on user adherence to micro-groups. Based on the findings, strategies to help micro-group site develop an enhanced “lock-in” effect are proposed