Query Flattening and the Nested Data Parallelism Paradigm

This work is based on the observation that languages for two seemingly distant domains are closely related. Orthogonal query languages based on comprehension syntax admit various forms of query nesting to construct nested query results and express complex predicates. Languages for nested data parallelism allow to nest parallel iterators and thereby admit the parallel evaluation of computations that are themselves parallel. Both kinds of languages center around the application of side-effect-free functions to each element of a collection. The motivation for this work is the seamless integration of relational database queries with programming languages. In frameworks for language-integrated database queries, a host language's native collection-programming API is used to express queries. To mediate between native collection programming and relational queries, we define an expressive, orthogonal query calculus that supports nesting and order. The challenge of query flattening is to translate this calculus to bundles of efficient relational queries restricted to flat, unordered multisets. Prior approaches to query flattening either support only query languages that lack in expressiveness or employ a complex, monolithic translation that is hard to comprehend and generates inefficient code that is hard to optimize. To improve on those approaches, we draw on the similarity to nested data parallelism. Blelloch's flattening transformation is a static program transformation that translates nested data parallelism to flat data parallel programs over flat arrays. Based on the flattening transformation, we describe a pipeline of small, comprehensible lowering steps that translates our nested query calculus to a bundle of relational queries. The pipeline is based on a number of well-defined intermediate languages. Our translation adopts the key concepts of the flattening transformation but is designed with specifics of relational query processing in mind. Based on this translation, we revisit all aspects of query flattening. Our translation is fully compositional and can translate any term of the input language. Like prior work, the translation by itself produces inefficient code due to compositionality that is not fit for execution without optimization. In contrast to prior work, we show that query optimization is orthogonal to flattening and can be performed before flattening. We employ well-known work on logical query optimization for nested query languages and demonstrate that this body of work integrates well with our approach. Furthermore, we describe an improved encoding of ordered and nested collections in terms of flat, unordered multisets. Our approach emits idiomatic relational queries in which the effort required to maintain the non-relational semantics of the source language (order and nesting) is minimized. A set of experiments provides evidence that our approach to query flattening can handle complex, list-based queries with nested results and nested intermediate data well. We apply our approach to a number of flat and nested benchmark queries and compare their runtime with hand-written SQL queries. In these experiments, our SQL code generated from a list-based nested query language usually performs as well as hand-written queries

Regional narratives, hidden maps, and storied places: cultural cartographies of the Cariri region, Northeast Brazil

In recent years, maps and mappings have gained increasing attention in cultural-geographic studies. However, little has been written about how to employ cartographic products and processes as research methodologies in practice. In this dissertation I present four different qualitative mapping strategies that I label cultural cartographies and that aim to critically investigate the relations between geographical knowledge and representation, society and cartography, culture and maps. A region in Northeast Brazil, the Cariri in the state of Ceará, was selected as the space to test these strategies and to show how maps (both historic and contemporary and in their metaphorical sense) help construct, confirm, and even conceal identities and actively shape, define, and redefine a region whose history has been constructed upon official written records and left out less visible regional narratives, hidden maps, and storied places that I aimed to excavate through my mappings. The diversified set of cartographic tools for this study included historical maps and their social lives, mental maps as visual expressions of regional knowledge and worldviews, interviews about maps and mapmaking and the respective regional cartographic culture, and the author’s own attempts to translate words into maps and produce cartographic representations. Finally, I argue that these mappings stimulate the engagement and communication with different cartographic perspectives and open up a whole universe of possibilities and perspectives for the mapmaker, map reader, and cultural geographer that are not restricted to the academic setting, but could also be of practical use in society, taking into account that maps are not conceived only as representations, but also as translations and dialogues that help link material culture, discourse and performative ways to comprehend reality

Electronic voting: Methods and protocols

The act of casting a ballot during an election cycle has been plagued by a number of problems, both intrinsic and extraneous. The old-fashioned paper ballot solves a number of problems, but creates its own. The clear 21st Century solution is the use of an automated electronic system for collection and tallying of votes, but the attitude of the general populace towards these systems has been overwhelmingly negative, supported in some cases by fraud and abuse. The purpose of this thesis is to do a broad survey of systems available on the market now (both in industry and academia) and then compare and contrast these systems to an “ideal” system, which we attempt to define. To do this we survey academic and commercial literature from many sources and selected the most popular, current, or interesting of the designs—then compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of these designs. What we discovered is that devices presented by industry are not only closed-box (which makes them inherently untrustworthy), but also largely inept in security and/or redundancy. Conversely, systems presented by academia are relatively strong in security and redundancy, but lack in ease-of-use or miss helpful features found on industry devices. To combat these perceived weaknesses, we present a prototype of one system which has not previously been implemented, described in Wang [1]. This system brings together many ideas from academia to solve a significant number of the issues plaguing electronic voting machines. We present this solution in its entirety as open-source software for review by the cryptographic and computer science community. In addition to an electronic voting implementation this solution includes a graphical user interface, a re-encryption mix network, and several decryption methods including threshold decryption. All of these items are described in-depth by this thesis. However, as we discuss in the conclusion, this solution falls short in some areas as well. We earmark these problem areas for future research and discuss alternate paths forward

Transitioning to Quality Education

Transitioning to Quality Education focuses on the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal. According to SDG 4, every learner should acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development (UN 2015, 17). Thus, the aim of sustainability education is to foster learners to be creative and responsible global citizens, who critically reflect on the ideas of sustainable development and the values that underlie them, and take responsible actions for sustainable development (UNESCO 2017). Sustainability is strongly connected to attitudes and values, therefore, applications of sustainability are complicated. Quality education requires teachers to have competences, knowledge, and skills to be able to plan and carry out meaningful education and teaching in sustainability. The aim of Transitioning to Quality Education is to provide versatile experiences and new knowledge on the cognitive, affective, and social issues that are important for promoting sustainable development in formal and non-formal education. Transitioning to Quality Education is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. Set to be published in 2020/2021, the book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries

Negotiating Traditions : Taiwanese Art Since the 1980s

Traditions, especially those that are non-Western, tend to be popularly perceived as very ancient. This is frequently not the case as shown, for instance, by Eric Hobsbawn and others in their studies demonstrating that traditions are "often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented." Employing this perspective as a starting point, it is my special interest to investigate how contemporary Taiwanese art came to develop an "active," creative relationship with tradition, provoked by the analysis of, the resistance against, or the programmatic re-presentation of that tradition. After Martial Law was lifted in 1987, the Taiwanese society witnessed an unprecedented era of rapid and continuous change. As a result, cultural resources and different traditions from the past, rooted in various timelines and localities, have concurrently surfaced and presented themselves as multiple opportunities for visual artists. The objective of this thesis is to examine how traditions are developed, constructed, incorporated, juxtaposed, forged, and processed; in short: how they are negotiated by the artists, and what kind of messages and ideas are expressed by them, by which means and for which reasons. After providing a historical survey of Taiwan’s artistic development, the study focuses on six major artworks by six contemporary Taiwanese artists including Huang Chin-ho, Yang Mao-lin, Lien Te-cheng, Wu Mali, Huang Chih-yang, and Hou Chun-ming. The primary issues subsequently examined are the artist’ visual languages, their artistic styles and development, and the iconographical sources from which they draw. Furthermore, contemporary writings and the artists’ statements are extensively consulted, evaluated, analyzed, and critically read in order to uncover the full meaning or hidden messages contained within the artworks. The study concludes that the project of Taiwan's contemporary tradition-making is ambitious and heterogeneous, encompassing cultures as diverse and hybrid as Western contemporary philosophical discourse, various artistic traditions, local popular and religious customs, the Chinese tradition, especially in its marginal and occult varieties, and, not least, the cultural impact of Japanese colonial rule

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationMy dissertation focuses on an ecocritical evaluation of environmental representation in contemporary comics and graphic novels. Ecocriticism and the graphic narrative share disciplinary similarities; both are hybrid forms that commingle seemingly incommensurable components (literature and the land, text and image), and both continue to evolve in complex and exciting ways. Using the familiar rubric of animal, vegetable, and mineral, my dissertation explores the theoretical underpinnings of ecocriticism's contemporary moment as it is illustrated in the graphic environment. Ecocriticism today is marked by an increased interest in postcolonial theory and by a posthumanist turn that has culminated in various species of speculative realism and new materialist theory. Following an introduction designed to juxtapose the development of ecocriticism with the evolving graphic and narrative conventions of comics and graphic novels, I turn in my first chapter to a postcolonial ecocritical analysis of the graphic novel. Given the confluence of aesthetics and politics in a postcolonial theory, I invoke the work of French theorist Jacques Rancière as a necessary component of my ecocritical analysis of three graphic narratives featuring animal protagonists. My second chapter provides close textual and visual readings of two graphic novels whose vegetable-human hybrid characters provide models for applying Deleuze's theory of the rhizome and Manuel DeLanda's assemblage theory to environmental representation. This chapter introduces key concepts that ground much of new materialism and serves as a bridge to my third chapter. Here, I weave together the threads of feminist materialism and object-oriented ontology in an ecocritical reading of three graphic novels that consider things from a thing's point of view. My conclusion shifts forward to an ecocritical reading of two graphic novels that provide global and local perspectives on the critical issues concerning environmental writers and theorists today, the ecological, social, and economic consequences of hyperobjects like global climate change and global financial collapse. Graphic narratives provide a uniquely effective representational medium for locating the contemporary environmental imagination and for illustrating the theoretical complexities beneath its surface. I argue that there is much work to be done at the confluence of image and text in the graphic environment

Ghost (Hi)stories: Fiction as Alternative History in Brodber, Valdés, Cisneros, and Condé

This dissertation analyzes the role that female ghosts play in recuperating memory and filling the gaps of official history in the following four contemporary novels: Erna Brodber’s Louisiana (1994), Zoé Valdés’s Te di la vida entera (1996), Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo: or, Puro Cuento (2002), and Maryse Condé’s Victoire, les saveurs et les mots: récit (2006). The ghosts in these novels disrupt a linear temporality and present a matriarchal mode of remembering, leading readers to reconsider the past outside of the dominant historical discourse. In this way, the novels become alternative histories that oppose the monologic historical paradigm and recuperate marginalized voices silenced by History with a capital H. The novels trouble the boundary between truth and fiction, asking the reader to consider the moral value of art. The reader is obliged to relinquish certain assumptions about history and its creation and processes in order to understand how fiction can be an alternative history. My introduction explores the historical paradigm that these novels destabilize, including a Hegelian concept of history that is based on reason. The introduction also sets up the feminist methodology that drives my analysis and presents the geographic scope of my dissertation. Chapter One explores the tradition of the ghost in the literature of the Americas, especially how ghosts confront traumatic pasts and destabilize a linear temporality. In Chapter Two I analyze Brodber’s Louisiana, which employs two female ghosts to resist hegemonic historical discourse via spirit possession. In the third chapter I discuss ghosts’ affective nature in Valdés’s Te di la vida entera and Cisneros’s Caramelo. The spirit narrators in these novels recreate memory via nostalgia and the affective nature of music. Chapter Four explores imagination’s role in filling the gaps of history through an analysis of Condé’s Victoire, whose narrator is haunted by the ghost of her grandmother and compelled to reconstruct her history. My conclusion draws out the specific similarities between the four novels and further explores the way in which these novels not only use the ghost figure to comment on the past, but also employ it to initiate healing within individual relationships between women

Landscapes of Recovery: Belonging and Place in Post-Katrina Literatures

In Landscapes of Recovery: Belonging and Place in Post-Katrina Literatures, I analyze narratives of physical and social change following the events of Hurricane Katrina while providing a critical reading of the representations of New Orleans’s and the Gulf Coast’s urban landscapes in works of urban planning, nonfiction literature, and activist writing. A general line of inquiry informs this project: how do narratives about the disaster landscape following Katrina make visible or invisible certain political subjects? I assert that, by telling stories about the post- and pre-disaster landscape and its urban development history, these narratives carry out the process of displacement. Through a discursive analysis and close reading of a range of texts, including recovery plans, government reports, creative nonfiction, and public art projects, I explore how the writings about New Orleans’s disaster landscapes maintain and remake social differences within the urban population that make displacement possible. Overall, in Landscapes of Recovery, I argue that it is through these narratives about the urban space affected by disaster that notions of property, community, and belonging are contested

Casco Bay Weekly : 6 October 1988

https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/cbw_1988/1022/thumbnail.jp