Improving Reuse of Distributed Transaction Software with Transaction-Aware Aspects

Implementing crosscutting concerns for transactions is difficult, even using Aspect-Oriented Programming Languages (AOPLs) such as AspectJ. Many of these challenges arise because the context of a transaction-related crosscutting concern consists of loosely-coupled abstractions like dynamically-generated identifiers, timestamps, and tentative value sets of distributed resources. Current AOPLs do not provide joinpoints and pointcuts for weaving advice into high-level abstractions or contexts, like transaction contexts. Other challenges stem from the essential complexity in the nature of the data, operations on the data, or the volume of data, and accidental complexity comes from the way that the problem is being solved, even using common transaction frameworks. This dissertation describes an extension to AspectJ, called TransJ, with which developers can implement transaction-related crosscutting concerns in cohesive and loosely-coupled aspects. It also presents a preliminary experiment that provides evidence of improvement in reusability without sacrificing the performance of applications requiring essential transactions. This empirical study is conducted using the extended-quality model for transactional application to define measurements on the transaction software systems. This quality model defines three goals: the first relates to code quality (in terms of its reusability); the second to software performance; and the third concerns software development efficiency. Results from this study show that TransJ can improve the reusability while maintaining performance of TransJ applications requiring transaction for all eight areas addressed by the hypotheses: better encapsulation and separation of concern; loose Coupling, higher-cohesion and less tangling; improving obliviousness; preserving the software efficiency; improving extensibility; and hasten the development process

Contemporary Malaysian Cinema: Genre, Gender and Temporality

This thesis provides close, contextualised readings of representations of gender and temporality in a number of contemporary, post-millennial genre films. The focus is on textual analysis of the films, placed within the contexts of their production and critical reception both within and outside Malaysia. This study lies at the intersections of scholarship on Malaysian cinema, film genre, and Asian gender and cultural studies. This thesis argues that the directors’ reworking of genres renders a more dynamic and hybrid nature of generic forms, reiterating certain conventions of old media and cinematic forms such as the culturally-specific mode of melodrama, and elements of magic and superstition. In doing so, they fall outside and question the assumed binary between realist and non-realist genres in US films based on generic regimes of verisimilitude. I further argue that this reworking of genres complicates the dominant notion of gendered subjectivities, which is contained within the binaries of Old Malay and New Malay, Malay and non-Malay, rural and urban, and professional and working-class. In all of the films I examine, such binaries, which have been spawned by the combined forces of the postcolonial capitalist state and resurgent Islam, are destabilised through diverse representations of time, narratively and aesthetically. In the process, they question and fracture the chronology of ‘homogeneous empty time’ that underlies the linear narrative of nation. For example, in romance and horror films, notions of ‘modern’ femininity are represented more ambivalently whereas in comedy and action films, anxieties about modernity are projected on marginalised forms of masculinity. The ultimate aim of this thesis is to reflect upon the ways in which the transformations of both genre and gender lead the films examined to critique contradictory aspects of modernity in postcolonial, contemporary Malaysia

Ways of Monsoon Air: Entanglements and Stories of Matter, Space, and Time

The air of the monsoon is a powerful force of matter that makes, co-constitutes and is made by its many worlds. Having emerged from the context of the Monsoon Assemblages project, this doctoral thesis asks how the air of the monsoon re-orients, informs, animates and confronts the way we view Delhi and how the city animates, opens up and assists in the distribution of its matter and politics through the monsoon. Through the process of the work, the thesis travels to a variety of locations, temporalities, matters and times to engage with the sticky complexity of the liveliness of (and living because of) monsoonal atmosphere. I develop something that I call A Monsoon Air Methodology which I propose is a way of meandering with and because of monsoonal capacities and forms – in inviting generosity of the way different knowledges view the monsoon, and letting monsoonal sway mediate those stories – in concluding that the monsoon is a knowledge system too. Enveloped between an introduction with notes for a methodology and a conclusion are three chapters. They are about the winter haze, an invasive plant species and the question of the death of monsoonal time – amidst a range of linkages and materials. The work is very interdisciplinary and gathers a variety of methods and approaches in engaging and deepening an understanding of the role of the monsoon and anthropogenic materiality as they agentially mingle in the co-production of narrative, writing, worlds, possibilities, pasts and the broader implication of monsoonal thought – investing in its opacity, survivability, uncertainity, multispecies ecology and permeation. Through this work, I ask how thinking and sensing through the monsoon and its ways – can open up, share, distribute and make insights of matters, places and times, for liveability, in these precarious troubles of the Anthropocene

Women Lovin' Women: An Exploration of Identities, Belonging, and Communities in Urban and Rural Guyana

Over the last decade, there has been a surge of LGBTQ human rights movement and activism in the Caribbean region. Guyana, located in South America, and woven into the anglophone Caribbean, is not outside of these shifts and changes occurring in the broader region. Despite the vast research on non-normative sexuality in the region, little is known about the perspective and experience of Guyanese women. This dissertation concerns itself with the sexual praxis, identities, and conceptualizations of LGBTQ rights from the perspective of women who love women (WLW) and LBGQ women in Guyana. This work has three central aims: to investigate the ways in which the intersecting factors of race, class, gender, and space operate to construct and inform womens identity and positionality in urban Georgetown and rural Berbice; to examine the different manifestations of violence within a heteropatriarchal society; and to assess the impact of transnational LGBTQ rights on womens understanding of same-sex marriage and citizenship. To answer these questions, this study utilizes qualitative methods, namely in-depth interviews and participant observations with thirty-three Guyanese women in urban Georgetown and rural Berbice. An analysis of the interviews yields that the womens lives are deeply complicated by their racial, gender, class and spatial positions which, at times, reinforce and challenge our assumptions about their sexual identities, praxis, community and being out and proud in urban and rural spaces. The interviews further reveal and depart from heteropatriarchal theorizations of violence and offer an affectual counterpoint to understanding violence. The final part of this study demonstrates the contradictions in experiences embedded within LGBTQ rights as human rights, particularly same-sex marriage and citizenship. Overall, this dissertation argues that there needs to be a sustained analysis and attentiveness to ways in which differences of race, class, sexuality, gender, and regional positionalities are embodied and shape the lives of WLW and LGBQ women. This study adds nuances to our understandings of who WLW and LGBQ women are in Guyana and simultaneously illuminates the structural socio-political and economic context that impact lives

Rāmṭek and its landscape: An archaeological approach to the study of the Eastern Vākāṭaka kingdom in central India.

This thesis investigates the development of the landscape surrounding the Eastern Vākāṭaka ritual centre of Rāmṭek in central India. The research aims to contextualise the site of Rāmṭek through the use of landscape archaeology, to explore its relationship to rural settlement and thus go beyond the existing preoccupation with the isolated study of its monumental remains. The results of the survey are used to construct a hypothetical case study for the development of the Early Historic landscape in this region. This narrative of landscape development is connected to the region’s socio-economic development under the Vākāṭakas, which will be related to the wider context of Early Historic to Early Medieval change in India. The survey develops existing methodologies to suit the environment encountered on fieldwork and subsequently a preliminary approach to data analysis is presented. Through landscape survey and ceramic seriation, broad phases of development can be determined. Based on a significant increase in material evidence from the Early Historic period, it is argued that this phase witnessed changes in religious, political and socio-economic spheres. Whilst these developments are only securely related to the over-arching Early Historic period, there is evidence to suggest that the Vākāṭakas influenced development following their establishment of the ritual site and occupation of the area as a dynastic centre. The survey results demonstrate a prosperous local economy as opposed to deurbanisation and economic decline, which is popularly associated with the period of Vākāṭaka rule. The Eastern Vākāṭaka data is then referred to the wider context of the nature of Early Historic to Early Medieval urbanism in the Indian subcontinent. It is argued that ‘urbanism’ may have been expressed differently in this period resulting in low-density networks of productive settlements or conurbations

Governing Future Challenges in Mediterranean Protected Areas

The book presents current Governance and Management Systems of Protected Areas, assessing their appropriateness to face future challenges, providing reciprocal benefits to local communities and environment. Eight articles reflect the main threats accelerating negative impacts on marine ecosystems such as climate change, invasive alien species, marine litter, tourism. How can marine and terrestrial Protected Areas such as Biosphere Reserves, Natural and Cultural World Heritage sites, Natura 2000 areas, National and Regional Parks, and marine observatories increase their response mechanisms? Considerations for new paradigms related to the protection of the marine environment are presented and experts discuss recommendations for the transformation of the Governance and Management Systems

Addressing aspect interactions in an industrial setting: experiences, problems and solutions

Aspect oriented programming (AOP) introduces new and powerful modularization constructs. The aspect module is used to encapsulate crosscutting concerns, which otherwise would remain tangled and scattered. The idea of encapsulating crosscutting concerns rapidly expanded to earlier phases in the development cycle, including requirement analysis (aspect oriented requirement engineering, AORE) and design (aspect oriented modeling, AOM). The overall application of aspect orientation concepts is known as aspect oriented software development (AOSD). AOP is not yet a mainstream practice. Particularly AOSD is still in its early stages. This is reflected in the lack of reports of full development cycles using aspect oriented approaches, especially using industrial case studies. Furthermore, the power of aspects comes at the price of new challenges, one of them is that systems built using aspects are more difficult to understand. The crosscutting nature of aspects allows them to alter the behavior of many other modules. As a result, aspects may interact in unintended and unanticipated ways. This problem is known as aspect interactions. In this work we deal with the aspect interaction problem in the context of an industrial domain: slots machines. We perform a complete development cycle of the slot machine software. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first complete industrial case of study of aspect orientation. Through this experience we discovered the limitations with regard to aspect interactions, of some emblematic aspect oriented approaches for requirement engineering, design and implementation. The contribution of this work is threefold. Firstly, we contribute with the evaluation and extensions to some of AORE and AOM approaches, in order to provide explicit support for aspect interactions in requirement analysis and design phases. We also evaluate the implementation of interactions using a static and a dynamic AOP language, and propose an AspectJ extension that copes with aspect interactions. Secondly, this work is the first report of a complete aspect oriented development cycle of an industrial case study. Thirdly, this work provides a complex case study that presents several business logic crosscutting concerns, which in turn exhibit numerous aspect interactions, that serves as a challenging test bed for upcoming AOSD approaches.Facultad de Informátic

Textile Society of America- Abstracts and Biographies

TSA Abstracts and Biographies, September 2012