An Algorithm For Building Language Superfamilies Using Swadesh Lists

The main contributions of this thesis are the following: i. Developing an algorithm to generate language families and superfamilies given for each input language a Swadesh list represented using the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) notation. ii. The algorithm is novel in using the Levenshtein distance metric on the IPA representation and in the way it measures overall distance between pairs of Swadesh lists. iii. Building a Swadesh list for the author\u27s native Kinyarwanda language because a Swadesh list could not be found even after an extensive search for it. Adviser: Peter Reves

The Design and Implementation of AIDA: Ancient Inscription Database and Analytics System

AIDA, the Ancient Inscription Database and Analytic system can be used to translate and analyze ancient Minoan language. The AIDA system currently stores three types of ancient Minoan inscriptions: Linear A, Cretan Hieroglyph and Phaistos Disk inscriptions. In addition, AIDA provides candidate syllabic values and translations of Minoan words and inscriptions into English. The AIDA system allows the users to change these candidate phonetic assignments to the Linear A, Cretan Hieroglyph and Phaistos symbols. Hence the AIDA system provides for various scholars not only a convenient online resource to browse Minoan inscriptions but also provides an analysis tool to explore various options of phonetic assignments and their implications. Such explorations can aid in the decipherment of Minoan inscriptions. Adviser: Peter Z. Reves

An Algorithm For Building Language Superfamilies Using Swadesh Lists

The main contributions of this thesis are the following: i. Developing an algorithm to generate language families and superfamilies given for each input language a Swadesh list represented using the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) notation. ii. The algorithm is novel in using the Levenshtein distance metric on the IPA representation and in the way it measures overall distance between pairs of Swadesh lists. iii. Building a Swadesh list for the author\u27s native Kinyarwanda language because a Swadesh list could not be found even after an extensive search for it. Adviser: Peter Reves

MALLEABLE TERRITORIES: THE POLITICS AND EFFECTS OF MINING GOVERNANCE IN POST-SOVIET GEORGIA

On December 13, 2014, the Republic of Georgia’s central government made a rapid series of decisions behind closed doors. These legislative moves allowed RMG Gold, the Russian-owned mining company operating in Georgia’s southern Mashavera Valley, to destroy the archaeological site at Sakdrisi-Kachgariani – the oldest gold mine ever discovered and a national cultural heritage site. The government’s decision followed more than a year of contentious struggle among competing political factions, yet in the end the mining work moved forward and continues expanding today. RMG’s destruction of Sakdrisi was just one event within Georgia’s broader political transition, de-centralizing resource governance toward corporate interests through a territorially based system of extraction licenses. This dissertation investigates the political geographies of Georgia’s resource governance transition, analyzing the politics and effects of mining governance in this post-Soviet market-oriented democracy. I analyze this topic using a mixed methods approach, combining semi-structured interviews, discourse and textual analysis, and a spatial database of mining sites throughout the former Soviet Union. My analysis illustrates how these political practices contribute to the broader geopolitical shifts within the country and across the region, occurring in part through the narratives and embodied experiences of people living near the Sakdrisi-Madneuli mining complex. Through this investigation I argue that the Mashavera Valley’s “malleable territories” – my phrase for this territory’s flexible and governable nature, especially as it relates to mineral governance, mining, and the government of people and things – emerge from a range of political practices, geopolitical imaginations, and material experiences to reshape the political spaces of Georgia and the South Caucasus. Together these findings illustrate how environmental struggles and practices of resource governance contribute to broader shifting power geometries and a lived vision of geopolitics

Cartographic Analysis of Earth-Sun Relationships in Ancient Amazonia

The alignments of ancient man-made earthworks across the Amazon Basin, known as geoglyphs, have recently been discovered to predate early societal dates. Although much research indicated that the Amazon was uninhabitable until the last 1000 years (Meggers 1971), new evidence suggests this is not the case. The application of advanced cartographic and GIS technologies were implemented to link solar ‘marker’ days (e.g. solstices, equinoxes) with the alignment of geoglyphs, megaliths, stone architecture, and broader city forms to discover and analyze previously unknown Earth-Sun relationships across the Amazon Basin to conceivably sophisticated urban and architectural plans. The study of these geoglyphs and other man-made structures has revealed comparable solar linkages and alignments; it is hoped that similar alignments will be found, leading to a shift in our understanding of the level of complexity used by ancient Amazonian tribes and civilizations. The implications of these findings are significant, not only for understanding the Amazonian peoples\u27 history and culture but also for challenging the long-held Western-centric view of civilization and development. By recognizing the advanced knowledge and practices of ancient Amazonian societies, we can gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the diversity of human ability throughout history

Cartographic Analysis of Earth-Sun Relationships in Ancient Amazonia

The alignments of ancient man-made earthworks across the Amazon Basin, known as geoglyphs, have recently been discovered to predate early societal dates. Although much research indicated that the Amazon was uninhabitable until the last 1000 years (Meggers 1971), new evidence suggests this is not the case. The application of advanced cartographic and GIS technologies were implemented to link solar ‘marker’ days (e.g. solstices, equinoxes) with the alignment of geoglyphs, megaliths, stone architecture, and broader city forms to discover and analyze previously unknown Earth-Sun relationships across the Amazon Basin to conceivably sophisticated urban and architectural plans. The study of these geoglyphs and other man-made structures has revealed comparable solar linkages and alignments; it is hoped that similar alignments will be found, leading to a shift in our understanding of the level of complexity used by ancient Amazonian tribes and civilizations. The implications of these findings are significant, not only for understanding the Amazonian peoples\u27 history and culture but also for challenging the long-held Western-centric view of civilization and development. By recognizing the advanced knowledge and practices of ancient Amazonian societies, we can gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the diversity of human ability throughout history

MammoSapiens: eResearch of the lactation program.

Delivering bioinformatics power to life science researchers inevitably runs into problems of limited computing resources in the context of exponentially increasing data sources, access time, costs, lack of skills and, rapidly evolving technology and software tools with poorly defined standards. In this context the development of e-facilities to best enable collaborative research often needs to be customized to specific project applications in close cooperation with the experimentalist users and, to be concerned with the storage and management of results to allow more consistency and traceability of e-results on a broad access data mining platform. Here we showcase an internet based eResearch platform using the PHP/MySQL paradigm for the collaborative, integrative and comparative analysis of lactation related gene sequences and gene expression experiments to support lactation research. We also illustrate how these resources are used, how they enable research by allowing meta-analysis of data and results and, how the bottom-up development of customized eResearch components can lead to the production of more generic functional software tools and eResearch environments for deployment to a larger number of biological research users working on other bio-systems.<br /

MammoSapiens: eResearch of the lactation program. Building online facilities for collaborative molecular and evolutionary analysis of lactation and other biological systems from gene sequences and gene expression data.

Delivering bioinformatics power to life science researchers inevitably runs into problems of limited computing resources in the context of exponentially increasing data sources, access time, costs, lack of skills and, rapidly evolving technology and software tools with poorly defined standards. In this context the development of online facilities to best enable collaborative research often needs to be customized to specific project applications in close cooperation with the experimentalist users and, to be concerned with the storage and management of results to allow more consistency and traceability of results on a broad access data mining platform. Here we showcase an Internet based research platform using the PHP/MySQL paradigm for the collaborative, integrative and comparative analysis of lactation related gene sequences and gene expression experiments to support lactation research. We also illustrate how these resources are used, how they enable research by allowing meta-analysis of data and results and, how the bottom-up development of customized eResearch components can lead to the production of more generic functional software tools and eResearch environments for deployment to a larger number of biological researchers working on other bio-systems

Dealing with big data

No abstract available