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The thesis explores the syntactic and semantic dimensions of four linguistic elements that appear in Modern Greek arguably as quantifiers and modifiers, i.e., in the form of Quantificational Modifiers (QMods) olos 'all, whole, overall' and its extension olikos 'total', merikos 'some, a few, partial', ligos 'some, few, little, insignificant' and polis 'many, great, considerable'. Such QMods are analyzed as 'measure' quantifiers of scalar semantics that appear in a syntactic position common to adjectival modifiers. The thesis explores specific sets of reading and their interpretations. Such a phenomenon is common to Modern Greek, English, French and Arabic QMods and gives evidence to the universality of Quantificational Modification.Chapter 1 discusses Quantification as semantic interpretation along with the main questions this research intends to answer, while Chapter 2 reviews recent literature on Quantification within and across languages. Chapter 3 focuses on Modern Greek expressions of Quantification and extends chapter 2 into a further discussion about the various syntactic manifestations. Chapters 4 and 5 are extensions to chapters 2 and 3 as they discuss the semantics of specific QMods as 'total' and 'partial' quantifiers, which operate on homomorphic sets of degrees and amounts.Chapter 6 discusses the broader issues in the thesis from a theoretical and typological perspective that establishes Quantificational Modification as a universal and purely semantic subclass of Quantification. Our findings are summarized in chapter 7, followed by suggestions for expanding our investigation into other related areas.

The modern FPGAs enable system designers to develop high-performance computing (HPC) applications with a large amount of parallelism. Real-time image processing is such a requirement that demands much more processing power than a conventional processor can deliver. In this research, we implemented software and hardware based architectures on FPGA to achieve real-time image processing. Furthermore, we benchmark and compare our implemented architectures with existing architectures. The operational structures of those systems consist of on-chip processors or custom vision coprocessors implemented in a parallel manner with efficient memory and bus architectures. The performance properties such as the accuracy, throughput and efficiency are measured and presented. According to results, FPGA implementations are faster than the DSP and GPP implementations for algorithms which can exploit a large amount of parallelism. Our image pre-processing architecture is nearly two times faster than the optimized software implementation on an Intel Core 2 Duo GPP. However, because of the higher clock frequency of DSPs/GPPs, the processing speed for sequential computations on on-chip processors in FPGAs is slower than on DSPs/GPPs. These on-chip processors are well suited for multi-processor systems for software level parallelism. Our quad-Microblaze architecture achieved 75-80% performance improvement compared to its single Microblaze counterpart. Moreover, the quad-Microblaze design is faster than the single-powerPC implementation on FPFA. Therefore, multi-processor architecture with customised coprocessors are effective for implementing custom parallel architecture to achieve real time image processing.

Pyrene, a four-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), was identified as the chemical that requires the largest land area for soil bioremediation due to the slow rate of biodegradation at the Libby, Montana Superfund site. Prepared bed land treatment is the specific bioremediation technology that is currently employed at this site. Although bioremediation has been widely accepted for treatment of contaminated soil due to its low cost, the effective application of bioremediation is often hindered by the lack of information related to: 1) biochemical pathways, 2) enzymatic mechanisms, and 3) effects of amendments.Mycobacterium sp. KMS is a new strain isolated from the land treatment units of the Libby site and has been found to utilize pyrene as a carbon and energy source. The genome of Mycobacterium sp. KMS was sequenced by Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and is publically available in the NCBI database.This dissertation is comprised of seven chapters. Chapter I provides information concerning PAH characteristics, the Libby Superfund site, accelerated bioremediation approaches, and the hypotheses for this dissertation. Chapter 2 addresses the pyrene degradation pathway used by Mycobacterium sp. KMS based on isolating and identifying pyrene degradation intermediates. Chapter 3 describes the enzymatic mechanism of pyrene degradation by Mycobacterium sp. KMS.Chapter 4 presents the effect of Elliott soil HA (ESHA) amendment on pyrene solubility in soil slurry systems and pyrene mineralization in unsaturated soil microcosms. Chapter 5 describes the overall effect of ESHA amendment on pyrene distribution in a soil slurry system.Chapter 6 addresses the engineering significance of this study and future research recommendations. Chapter 7 summarizes the dissertation. The main theme of this dissertation is to provide the basic scientific information and knowledge for better understanding, better control, and improvement of the bioremediation process at PAH-contaminated sites.

In the last two decades, a concern on how federal forests in the United States are managed has provoked concerns among different stakeholders, including NGOs. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of NGO influence on forest management legislation. Eight aspects were selected and compared in different study cases referring to legislative proposals dealing with forest management in order to define success criteria for a legislative initiative. The study indicates that the following criteria are particularly important to fulfill in order to influence forest management legislation:- The issue to address should be on the political agenda and have high public interest.- Environmental and social aspects should not be at the expense of economic aspects.- The legislative initiative should be prepared in multi-stakeholder processes, including local government and organizations.- The supporters of the initiative should take part in all decision-making processes and advise the Government in aspects related to their areas of expertise.NGOs would likely improve their chances of influencing forest management legislation if they hold a flexible position regarding legislative proposals containing similar or even less strict measures than their own initiatives, look at market oriented schemes as alternatives to legislation, and maintain good relationships with other major stakeholders.

This study examines the results of multiple evaluations of the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program (CTSP), a state-funded voucher program, by exploring extant evaluations and literature. Attention will be given to the following research question: Does participation in the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program have the hypothesized positive effect on traditional public school students' academic achievement? Cleveland's voucher program provides an ideal contextualized setting for ascertaining the extent to which school choice programs afford poor families the same educational options available to affluent families. This study concludes that overall there are no statistically significant gains in voucher students' academic achievement. In fact, it appears that some voucher students performed slightly worse in math. The program does, however, afford low-income students the opportunity to attend private secular or religious schools in accordance with the program's initial design and intent.

In Germany, political foundations (Stiftungen) play an important role in shaping civil society through political democracy education. The foundations, however, have also committed themselves to strengthening democratic political and societal structures abroad. Their joint mission abroad is the contribution to democratic structures, information and debate in the countries and regions they are working in. They complement the official German foreign policy, but choose their own priorities and strategies. The focus of this thesis is the German political foundations as actors in democracy assistance. 'Democracy assistance' focuses less on the aspects of technical assistance but much more on political parties and the promotion of civil society as the backbone of democracy. Democracy assistance is a relatively recent international development activity of governments and international organizations. In recent years the international community has come to realize the importance of political parties and a well-functioning political party system for the process of democratisation. Here the German political foundations are working internationally as actors in democracy assistance - independent from the German government but at the same time fully state-funded. The objectives of this dissertation are to understand the work and strategies of the German political foundations as actors in the context of democracy assistance abroad, research their partner spectrums on selected countries, to identify their short comings and to give an outlook of the foundations work in the future in the fast-changing global political environment.

The thesis has one main focus, the purity laws of a religious group in Europe, an original piece of research never done before in the UK. The thesis uses diasporic theories of identity; theories of women and the body; theories of women, their bodies and patriarchal religion and theories of women, purity and pollution in religion, to explain why European Zoroastrian women continue to support six of the purity laws of Zoroastrianism in the year 2003. Purity and pollution are at the heart of the Zoroastrian religion and the research demonstrated that Zoroastrians belief in and knowledge of the six purity laws was strong in 2003.Zoroastrians are a diasporic religious group whose modern origins are in Iran and the sub-continent of India. They have been visiting and settling, from the sub-continent, in Europe, and especially in London, in small numbers since the middle of the nineteenth century.There have been three quantitative surveys of the Zoroastrian community in Europe, in 1976, 1985 and 2003, with each survey building on the last one. Thus, the analytical, quantitative research leading up to the thesis covers a period of nearly 30 years. In the 2003 survey, new questions, never posed before in academic research, were asked about six of the Zoroastrian purity laws, which yielded data for the main focus of the thesis. The women support the six purity laws more than the men and the majority of both women and men affirmed four of the purity laws and rejected two of them.The conclusion of the thesis is that the six Zoroastrian purity laws examined in this research are used in the creation of a hybrid, immanent and liminal religious identity and in some cases ethnic identity, by the women of the European Zoroastrian community; purity laws are known about and matter to these women in Europe in 2003.

This study attempts to examine the impact of a trade decontrol policy on food output within the Nigerian macroeconomic context. In other words, the study relates trade liberalization to the national food security situation between 1970 and 2000, by employing descriptive statistics and error correction model (ECM) as the research methodologies.Regional and multilateral trade agreements seem to reduce barriers to the flow of commodities across borders, thus fostering a more efficient allocation of scarce resources as well as raising gross output with positive implications for food security at various levels. Though the trend analyses revealed considerable fluctuations, there existed greater improvements during the trade decontrol era than during the period of trade restriction. The production statistics for both agricultural exports and food showed substantial diversity of performance. Deregulation of the exchange rate and abolition of commodity boards were partly responsible for the significantly positive changes in the cash crop market and enhanced farmers' earnings during the trade decontrol era.One positive development during the trade liberalization era is the emerging trend as well as remarkable improvement in the production of agricultural tradables (cocoa, cotton, groundnut, palm kernel, palm oil and rubber), although this was at the expense of the food crop sub sector.Consumer Price Indices recorded high and increasing values during liberalization as compared to before deregulation. That is, the price situation of foods items was particularly more favourable before deregulation than thereafter. By implication, the purchasing power of most Nigerians, especially wage earners, declined, thereby making them to be less food secured.More specifically, beans appeared to be the most expensive of all the selected food items. The price of beans more than doubled that of guinea corn, maize and millet during the liberalization period under study. This made Nigerians more dependent on less nutritious but cheaper food items, such as cassava meals.The EPC analysis showed that food crops enjoyed adequate level of protection even during liberalization. The protection accorded to agriculture during liberalization resulted in a movement of resources to agriculture in general and non-food crops in particular.Since input subsidy and tariffs are crucial ingredients in the computation of EPCs which recorded some differences between the regulated and liberalized periods, Nigerians were less food secured during the liberalization era. The reason adduced for this is that supportive policies and programmes were not put in place to curtail the rising food prices and generally high inflation rate during the period. In view of this, desirable and workable policies are therefore required to reform as well as improve the efficiency of market process, in order to moderate marketing costs and eliminate undue mark ups.

The economic and human costs of diabetes in the U.S. population place an enormous burden on its healthcare system as well as on employers, diabetics, and their respective families. Many Medicare Advantage plans have responded to this burden by implementing diabetes case management programs (DCMPs) aimed at reducing inappropriate health services utilization, improving health outcomes, and containing costs. While the use of DCMPs is common to many health plans, the research regarding their effectiveness has been sparse or inconclusive. The purpose of this study was to help fill a critical gap in the research literature by evaluating the effect of a diabetes case management program known as CareContact on a Medicare population in Texas. The study population consisted of 2,972 confirmed diabetic members who were continuously enrolled in SelectCare of Texas, a Medicare Advantage plan, for the two-year period between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2006. To be eligible for this study, diabetic members had to have a minimum of 6 months without exposure to CareContact and 6 months of exposure to CareContact after the initial exposure. Twelve separate cohorts, defined by date of initial program exposure, were evaluated using a one group interrupted time series design. Cross sectional time series analysis, which combines ordinary least square regression techniques and time series analyses, was used to evaluate program effectiveness. After controlling for confounders and the effects of time, the data indicated that membership in the DCMP was associated with increased costs and increased utilization over the two-year study period. The study points to the need for further research into the effectiveness of diabetes case management programs, especially for participants of Medicare Advantage health plans.