Aftermath

On his first day in the Vietnamese bush, a soldier takes upon himself to recover the body of a fallen comrade. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit

Adaptive group testing as channel coding with feedback

Group testing is the combinatorial problem of identifying the defective items in a population by grouping items into test pools. Recently, nonadaptive group testing - where all the test pools must be decided on at the start - has been studied from an information theory point of view. Using techniques from channel coding, upper and lower bounds have been given on the number of tests required to accurately recover the defective set, even when the test outcomes can be noisy. In this paper, we give the first information theoretic result on adaptive group testing - where the outcome of previous tests can influence the makeup of future tests. We show that adaptive testing does not help much, as the number of tests required obeys the same lower bound as nonadaptive testing. Our proof uses similar techniques to the proof that feedback does not improve channel capacity.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Going Back Home

A soldier struggles with his return from Vietnam, searching for someone to talk with, to understand. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit

OJ

On his first leave from Vietnam, a soldier visits his brother, an All-American placekicker for the USC Trojans before their 1967 game with Notre Dame, and meets OJ Simpson. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit

Interference Mitigation in Large Random Wireless Networks

A central problem in the operation of large wireless networks is how to deal with interference -- the unwanted signals being sent by transmitters that a receiver is not interested in. This thesis looks at ways of combating such interference. In Chapters 1 and 2, we outline the necessary information and communication theory background, including the concept of capacity. We also include an overview of a new set of schemes for dealing with interference known as interference alignment, paying special attention to a channel-state-based strategy called ergodic interference alignment. In Chapter 3, we consider the operation of large regular and random networks by treating interference as background noise. We consider the local performance of a single node, and the global performance of a very large network. In Chapter 4, we use ergodic interference alignment to derive the asymptotic sum-capacity of large random dense networks. These networks are derived from a physical model of node placement where signal strength decays over the distance between transmitters and receivers. (See also arXiv:1002.0235 and arXiv:0907.5165.) In Chapter 5, we look at methods of reducing the long time delays incurred by ergodic interference alignment. We analyse the tradeoff between reducing delay and lowering the communication rate. (See also arXiv:1004.0208.) In Chapter 6, we outline a problem that is equivalent to the problem of pooled group testing for defective items. We then present some new work that uses information theoretic techniques to attack group testing. We introduce for the first time the concept of the group testing channel, which allows for modelling of a wide range of statistical error models for testing. We derive new results on the number of tests required to accurately detect defective items, including when using sequential `adaptive' tests.Comment: PhD thesis, University of Bristol, 201

Golf : gentlemen only ladies forbidden, or is it golden oldies live forever? : a 152.800 (100 point) research thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies at Massey University

Appendices A, B, D, E. contain newspaper clippings which have been removed due to copyright restrictions. Please see print copy held in Library.The focus of this research will be on gender relations that affect the organisational processes of golf in New Zealand. This area of research is of interest to me because during my experience both as a financial member of a private golf club and as a woman, I have experienced restrictions in the availability of playing opportunities. As an avid sportsperson I decided to play the game of golf in the late 1990s. Initially, I took up the game as a replacement sport due to a severe leg injury I received while playing squash; hence I now limit my involvement in sports that involve sudden movements and quick changes of direction. I have been involved with a large number of sporting organisations. Being a white New Zealand female, then in my late 30s, I found the traditional and reserved nature of the golf environment both fascinating and frustrating. For example, the times when women are allowed to play are restricted to specific times of the day during the working week and weekends. This format is known as the designated playing times for women and normally represent a smaller time percentage of the week when compared to the times that men are assigned as specific to them for the playing of golf. Generally, golf clubs perceived women as additional members, and their membership is considered as an associated membership rather than a full-playing and financial membership. This perception was reflected in the dollar value that women paid for their membership fees as they generally paid a lesser amount than did men (Appendix A). The assumption was that because women did not pay the same as men they did not therefore have the right to full access to the course and resources. The limited membership for women meant that golf clubs were perceived as being organised and controlled by men for the benefit of men and their golf, and women's golf was considered secondary to the development of the club membership and the promotion of the game (Alliss, 1989; Campbell, 1986). Having talked with a number of women members and women from other clubs it became apparent to me that the majority of clubs at that time operated in this manner and very few had what is now known in golfing circles as "equal rights" for men and women. [From Introduction

Thunder III

The awesome power of a military convoy in Vietnam can also be a danger. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit