Interactive L systems with almost interactionless behaviour

A restricted version of interactive L systems is introduced. A P2L system is called an essentially growing 2L-systems (e-G2L system) if every length-preserving production is interactionless (context-free). It is shown that the deterministic e-G2L systems can be simulated by codings of propagating interactionless systems, and that this is not possible for the nondeterministic version. Some interesting properties of e-GD2L systems are established, the main result being the decidability of the sequence equivalence problem for them

A model personal energy meter

Every day each of us consumes a significant amount of energy, both directly through transport, heating and use of appliances, and indirectly from our needs for the production of food, manufacture of goods and provision of services. This dissertation investigates a personal energy meter which can record and apportion an individual's energy usage in order to supply baseline information and incentives for reducing our environmental impact. If the energy costs of large shared resources are split evenly without regard for individual consumption each person minimises his own losses by taking advantage of others. Context awareness offers the potential to change this balance and apportion energy costs to those who cause them to be incurred. This dissertation explores how sensor systems installed in many buildings today can be used to apportion energy consumption between users, including an evaluation of a range of strategies in a case study and elaboration of the overriding principles that are generally applicable. It also shows how second-order estimators combined with location data can provide a proxy for fine-grained sensing. A key ingredient for apportionment mechanisms is data on energy usage. This may come from metering devices or buildings directly, or from profiling devices and using secondary indicators to infer their power state. A mechanism for profiling devices to determine the energy costs of specific activities, particularly applicable to shared programmable devices is presented which can make this process simpler and more accurate. By combining crowdsourced building-inventory information and a simple building energy model it is possible to estimate an individual's energy use disaggregated by device class with very little direct sensing. Contextual information provides crucial cues for apportioning the use and energy costs of resources, and one of the most valuable sources from which to infer context is location. A key ingredient for a personal energy meter is a low cost, low infrastructure location system that can be deployed on a truly global scale. This dissertation presents a description and evaluation of the new concept of inquiry-free Bluetooth tracking that has the potential to offer indoor location information with significantly less infrastructure and calibration than other systems. Finally, a suitable architecture for a personal energy meter on a global scale is demonstrated using a mobile phone application to aggregate energy feeds based on the case studies and technologies developed

Numerical investigations of the Dirac equation and bound state quantum electrodynamics in atoms : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

This thesis addresses, from a computational perspective, several open questions in relativistic atomic structure theory, which is the theoretical description of atoms based on the Dirac equation and quantum electrodynamics (QED). The first part of this thesis investigates several fundamental problems of the Dirac equation with the help of a novel numerical solver based on the one-dimensional finite element (FEM) basis set. Significant effort is made to validate and benchmark the solver, which is reliably able to converge to accurate results at numerical floating-point precision, including when nuclear potentials derived from nuclear models with finite spacial extent (as opposed to a point nucleus) are used. The solver is then applied to the Dirac equation in the challenging high nuclear charge regime where the Dirac equation exhibits several mathematical difficulties. In particular, the problem of the 1s bound state diving into the sea of negative energy continuum states is studied and the diving resonance state is numerically traced and analysed. As a type of workaround, a modified version of the Dirac equation where the negative energy plane-wave states are projected out of the Hilbert space is also solved and studied in the high nuclear charge regime. The second part of the thesis involves expanding the QED self-energy treatment in the atomic structure software GRASP. The configuration interaction (CI) portion of the code is significantly refactored to allow for the implementation of new additional effective operators that provide a more modern multi-electron treatment of QED self-energy effects. The implementation is tested by evaluating the QED and other post-Dirac-Coulomb corrections for the ground states of the beryllium-like isoelectronic sequence, which was also discovered to exhibit an interesting ground state configuration transition at high nuclear charge

The Bold and the Beautiful and Generations : a comparative ethnographic audience study of Zulu-speaking students living in residences on the University of Natal's Durban campus.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2002.This thesis is an ethnographic study of the soap opera viewing patterns and interpretations of Zulu-speaking students living in residences on the Natal University's Durban campus who watch The Bold and the Beautiful (an American soap opera) and Generations (a South African soap opera). It presents an analysis of how the viewing practices of the students compare with the findings of soap opera audience studies conducted abroad. The students' motivations and reasons for watching both soap operas are investigated. The reason for choosing black students as subjects is that I wanted to determine how a soap opera (Generations) which is comprised largely of black cast members and designed with a young black audience in mind, is interpreted and impacts on the lives of said audience, when compared with an American soap opera (The Bold and the Beautiful) which has an almost exclusively white American cast, and is popular with young black viewers in spite of the fact that it appears on the surface to be unrelated to their everyday lives. Individual one-on-one interviews were conducted with 40 students, 20 male and 20 female. The interviews were analysed to gauge how the viewing behaviour of the students differs from, or is similar to, soap opera studies conducted elsewhere in the world. It emerged that the students watch in groups and not alone, and that watching Generations and The Bold and the Beautiful is a social activity, not motivated from loneliness or isolation. The ways in which the students relate to the characters and situations of both soap operas is also examined, in an attempt to establish the role that these two shows play in the creation of the students' identities. The students displayed a tendency to be more critical of Generations than of The Bold and the Beautiful in the sense that they compared it (unfavourably) in terms of quality of production, to its American counterpart, as well as in the sense that they analysed storylines in terms of their own lived experiences and were quick to criticise Generations when they felt that it did not conform to their notions of the reality of being a black South African. They accepted situations and characters on The Bold and the Beautiful far less critically, although they did voice objections to certain characters and situations which they felt were morally questionable in terms of their understanding of right and wrong. It also became apparent that there was a greater emotional involvement with the characters on The Bold and the Beautiful than with those on Generations. The students interpretations of (and level of involvement with) situations, characters and storylines are examined, as well as the ways in which they derive pleasure from both soaps and incorporate them into their own lives. In summary, this thesis examines the consumption of an American and a South African soap opera by a black South African audience

The potential of emerging wearable physiological sensing in the space of human-subject studies

PhD ThesisIn recent years, novel sensing means in the form of smartwatches and fitness trackers with integrated sophisticated sensing emerged on the consumer market. While their primary purpose is to provide consumers with an overview of rough-grained health-related metrics, these signals offer to pick up fine-grained changes within the human body. This thesis considers the suitability of these novel wearable sensing devices to be used in affective research. Firstly, and based on the work with concrete state-of-the-art wearables, issues around the access of research-suitable data are discussed. The findings are put in context by examining common wearable device architectures and data access means provided. The discussion concludes with aspects researchers need to consider when seeking data access from state-of-the-art or future wearables. Secondly, two research probes explore the application of four exemplary devices to detect stress and affect in the wild and in the lab. Issues around the data reliability and participant comfort arose. The experiences are reflected upon to provide researchers with a summary of aspects to consider when applying wearable sensing devices in affective research. Lastly, this thesis contributes a Design Space for Physiological Measurement Tools. This design space was evaluated with a qualitative study enquiring research experts experiences. The resulting Design Space presents seven distinct dimensions of factors to consider when choosing a wearable sensing device for research. This design space has been applied to a novel sensing device which was used for a study on interpersonal synchrony. The insights and the ‘Design Space for Physiological Measurement Tools’ provide researchers with a tool to apply when they consider to use wearable physiological sensing devices in research