Heritage in the Myanmar Frontier: Shan State, Haws, and Conditions for Public Participation

Lack of public participation and engagement in the decision-making process hinders heritage conservation in Myanmar, in particular for the ethnic minorities who have been marginalized in the conservation practice. This thesis builds on the assumption that establishing participatory processes and decision-making mechanisms for heritage conservation in Myanmar can improve heritage representation in Myanmar. It will also serve the preservation of ethnic minority heritage better. As a multiethnic country with various historical narratives and interests, Myanmar faces challenges in representing the diverse heritages it possesses. Concerned with built heritage, this thesis seeks to improve heritage practice in Myanmar to include sites that are oriented towards the diverse history of the Union. It looks forward to broadening the conversation of public participation in Myanmars heritage sector. This thesis assesses the current conditions for public participation in Myanmar, providing an overview of heritage sites in Shan State and a more in-depth investigation of a case study site in Yawnghwe. In this research, history and identity are explored to understand the historical narrative and heritage of the ethnic minority in relations to the Union. Existing heritage conservation laws are analyzed and critiqued to suggest improvement for the conditions of the heritage sites. The conditions for public participation are examined through the use of the case study and community interviews to inform how heritage sites chosen are understood, and how they are conserved. The case study in Yawnghwe helps to explore policy improvement in heritage conservation, framing the opportunities and challenges that exist in heritage conservation practice in Myanmar

EXTENDED UTAUT2 MODEL ON FACTORS INFLUENCING OF MOBILE COMMERCE ACCEPTANCE IN YANGON, MYANMAR

Today, wireless telecommunication is well designed and there is significant evidence on the critical growth of wireless technologies in developing countries including Myanmar. However, the usage of mobile services and transactions such as mobile payment, mobile wallet, electronic business are still low in Myanmar.  This research attempts to investigate the factors influencing Mobile Commerce acceptance in Yangon, Myanmar and examines the differences in acceptance level among three generation groups (Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Y). A conceptual framework was developed based on an extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) for M-Commerce, and two additional variables such as disturbance concerns and perceived trust on behavior intention on use of M-commerce.  A survey data was collected from 405 the respondents who owned the mobile phone with M-Commerce knowledge in Yangon, Myanmar by using judgmental, quota and convenience sampling methods.  The Simple and Multiple Linear Regression and One-Way ANOVA were used.   Findings indicated that the five independent factors such as performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, price/value, habit from technology acceptance theory positively significantly influence the behavioral intention towards MCommerce acceptance.  The two extended variables such as disturbance concerns negatively significantly, and perceived trust positively significantly influence the behavioral intention towards M-Commerce acceptance. Among significant factors, habit is the most influencing on M-Commerce acceptance and Generations such as X and Y are sensitive on trust while using M-Commerce

Dynamics-based quantumness certification of continuous variables with generic time-independent Hamiltonians

Dynamics-based certification of quantumness is an approach to witnessing the nonclassical character of some continuous-variable states, under the assumption that their dynamics is known. Contrary to other tests of nonclassicality for single systems, it does not require sequential measurements. This family of protocols was introduced for harmonic dynamics. In this work, we show how to construct dynamics-based certification for one degree of freedom evolving under a generic time-independent Hamiltonian. Several examples are explicitly studied: some that are approximately harmonic in the limits of low energy (Kerr nonlinearities, the pendulum, and the Morse potential) and one that is not (the particle in an infinite well).Comment: 19 pages, 20 figure

Learning a Disentangled Embedding for Monocular 3D Shape Retrieval and Pose Estimation

We propose a novel approach to jointly perform 3D shape retrieval and pose estimation from monocular images.In order to make the method robust to real-world image variations, e.g. complex textures and backgrounds, we learn an embedding space from 3D data that only includes the relevant information, namely the shape and pose. Our approach explicitly disentangles a shape vector and a pose vector, which alleviates both pose bias for 3D shape retrieval and categorical bias for pose estimation. We then train a CNN to map the images to this embedding space, and then retrieve the closest 3D shape from the database and estimate the 6D pose of the object. Our method achieves 10.3 median error for pose estimation and 0.592 top-1-accuracy for category agnostic 3D object retrieval on the Pascal3D+ dataset, outperforming the previous state-of-the-art methods on both tasks

Molecular determinants of artemisinin resistance in k13 gene of plasmodium falciparum

Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) is the first-line therapy in most malaria endemic countries. An impressive 47% reduction in the global mortality rate between 2000 and 2013 has been achieved by ACT and artemisinin (ART) monotherapy. However, artemisinin resistance (AR) by Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) is now prevalent across south-east Asia (SEA). AR is indicated by delayed parasite clearance of more than 3 days after standard ART treatment and reduced in vitrosusceptibility. Recent work has shown association of AR with mutations in the propeller domain of the kelch gene on chromosome 13 (PF3D7_1343700, k13gene) of P. falciparum. The C580Y mutation of thek13gene is highly prevalent in Cambodia, Myanmar and eastern and western Thailand, while the F446I mutation is predominant in the China-Myanmar border regions as well as in Myanmar. AR has not reached India and Africa, where non-synonymous mutations not associated with delayed parasite clearance are present. Because the location of Myanmar is central between SEA and Africa, a country-specific strategy for Myanmar Artemisinin Resistance Containment (MARC) is necessary. Moreover, regular periodic tracking of prevalent molecular determinants such as C580Y and F446I mutations will be beneficial

Experimental Study on Sampling Theorem in Signal Processing

This practicum is to define the study properties of the sampling theorem. Understand the effect of selecting the sample size and its effect on the signal recovery process. The experiment utilizes a computer or portable workstation to run an examination of the hypothesis reenactment program. From the test information gotten, it can be concluded that the more noteworthy the frequency of the signal to be inspected, the closer the signal will be to the initial signal. The time and frequency of the examining signal are conversely relative. The higher the frequency, the lower the time will be. The magnitude of the amplitude of the output signal is indeterminate

Two-qubit sweet spots for capacitively coupled exchange-only spin qubits

The implementation of high fidelity two-qubit gates is a bottleneck in the progress towards universal quantum computation in semiconductor quantum dot qubits. We study capacitive coupling between two triple quantum dot spin qubits encoded in the $S = 1/2$, $S_z = -1/2$ decoherence-free subspace -- the exchange-only (EO) spin qubits. We report exact gate sequences for CPHASE and CNOT gates, and demonstrate theoretically, the existence of multiple two-qubit sweet spots (2QSS) in the parameter space of capacitively coupled EO qubits. Gate operations have the advantage of being all-electrical, but charge noise that couple to electrical parameters of the qubits cause decoherence. Assuming noise with a 1/f spectrum, two-qubit gate fidelities and times are calculated, which provide useful information on the noise threshold necessary for fault-tolerance. We study two-qubit gates at single and multiple parameter 2QSS. In particular, for two existing EO implementations -- the resonant exchange (RX) and the always-on exchange-only (AEON) qubits -- we compare two-qubit gate fidelities and times at positions in parameter space where the 2QSS are simultaneously single-qubit sweet spots (1QSS) for the RX and AEON. These results provide a potential route to the realization of high fidelity quantum computation.Comment: Main text (16 pages, 6 figures). Supplementary material (24 pages, 6 figures). Minor typographical errors fixed. Discussion added. Figures 5 and 6 reordere

Control for motion sickness minimisation in autonomous vehicles.

Automated vehicles are expected to push towards the evolution of transportation systems and exploit the use of vehicular technologies. This thesis investigates the fundamentals of motion planning for minimising motion sickness in transportation systems of higher automation levels. The optimum velocity pro le is sought for a predefined road path from a specific starting point to a final one within specific and given boundaries and constraints in order to minimise the motion sickness and the journey time. Motion sick- ness is minimised by taking the optimum trajectory and velocity profile for any given road path generated by the motion planner. The trajectory tracking controllers based on PID control method were able to track the reference trajectory with good performances. The trade-off between motion sickness and journey time was solved using the application of multi-objective optimisation by altering the weighting factors to find a compromise solution. The Pareto front representing the correlation between the two components is obtained and this front also allows user to select their preference driving style. From the three case studies, driving styles have a bigger impact on reducing motion sickness and journey time rather than vehicle speed and the road width. However, the effect of road width is negligible when travelling on longer road for the reduction of motion sickness and journey time. This finding is crucial considering the need for automated vehicles to drive on a fixed road path in respect to road safety and also to allow the employment of connected and automated vehicles in the future. Finally, an approach combining two optimisation algorithms, the optimal control problem and the k - є method, is applied successfully to seek the best trajectory profile that ensures the optimum compromise between motion comfort and driving behaviour, energy efficiency, vehicle stability, occupant's confidence to ride and journey time.PhD in Transport System

Detection of sequence type 131 in multi-drug resistant uropathogenic Escherichia coli isolates from two hospitals of Sabah

Background: Escherichia coli sequence type 131 (ST131) has emerged among bacteria causing urinary tract infection (UTI) in the previous decade. This ST contains multiple drug resistant (MDR) genes together with genes encoding many virulence factors. As a result, this strain of uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) gives rise to treatment failure with consequent prolonged stay in a hospital. Therefore, earlier identification of this strain in the hospital has advantage in combating severe type of UTI. Objective: To detect ST 131 strains in MDR UPEC isolates from two hospitals of Sabah. Materials and Methods: Antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed to detect MDR isolates. Two polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) including mdh and gyrB allelic-specific PCR were performed on these MDR to detect ST131 strains. Results: The results showed four isolates were resistant to TMP-SMX, gentamycin, ciprofloxacin, and cefotaxime, and three isolates of these were investigated to be ST131 clones by two PCR reactions. Conclusion: There is the presence of ST131 strains in hospitals of Sabah. This information will be a guideline for the clinician in the management of UTI in the clinical settings