Stony Brook Theses & Dissertations [SBU]
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Item The Limits of Liberty: African Americans, Indians, and Peons in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1820-1860(The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY., 1-May-12) Nichols, James David; Masten, April F.; Department of HistoryItem Two Cities of Sippar: Tell Abu-Habbah and Tell ed-Der(The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY., 2006-08-01) Mahmood, Lina; Stone, Elizabeth C.; Department of AnthropologyThe aim of this thesis is to determine whether a pair of sites located in southern Mesopotamia, Tell Abu-Habbah (ancient Sippar-Jahrurum) and Tell ed-Der (ancient Sippar-Amnânum) represented two different cities or one larger complex. The spirit of this paper is to produce a comprehensive and comparative study of both sites to understand the connection between them and to find out whether or not they were one or two cities. This research used written documentation, archaeological data and the results of geomorphological analyses, all mediated by a GIS of the area, to investigate this problem. The thesis concludes that both cities were part of one center called Sippar, as reflected in their names. Even though the two cities were separated by some six kilometers, they were dependent on each other. Tell ed-Der seems to have been a complementary part of Abu-Habbah, serving primarily as its suburb and manufacturing area.Item The Complexity of Domestic Interiors: Laurie Simmons's Depiction of Women's Identity in the Home(The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY., 2011-08-01) Cesiro, Lauren Elise; Bogart, Michele H.; Department of Art HistoryLaurie Simmons was among a group of artists in the 1980’s working in photography, film, video, and performance who recognized the influence of the mass media on the American public. Simmons used her art practice to comment on these images tailored to the consumer. Much of her photographic work of dolls and dollhouses challenges the viewer’s concept of the relationship between women and their domestic interiors. This thesis examines three photographs from the following series: Color Coordinated Interiors (1982-1983), The Instant Decorator (2001-2004), and The Long House (2002-2004). In these series, Simmons presents the home as a complex environment that both shapes and is shaped by one’s identity. In each of these exemplary photographs, Simmons’s women become literally and figuratively multifaceted in both public and private spaces in the home. Gradually, throughout these three series, she separates the women from their surrounding objects. These works show how she has explored issues of gender identity construction and in particular a feminine identity. Informed by writings by Betty Friedan, Hannah Arendt, and a range of iv feminist scholars whose perspectives I found helpful and resonated with my own, I will explore how Simmons uses interiors to construct and comment on feminine identity. Laurie Simmons’s photographic work of dolls and dollhouses challenges viewers to examine their domestic surroundings. Her work asks questions such as: What shapes a person’s identity? Is identity static or in flux? Is there such a thing as a universal woman’s identity? Much is written about feminism, the home, and art, but Simmons’s work has been underanalyzed in these areas. This thesis examines Simmons’s work in light of these concerns.Item Model-based Techniques for Dependable Decision Making in Groups of Agents Operating Autonomously(The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY., 1-Dec-11) Wang, Meng; Doboli, Alex; Department of Electrical EngineeringMassively distributed embedded systems are rapidly emerging as a key concept for many modern applications. Autonomous agents with mobile sensors are breakthrough concept in technology. However, providing efficient and scalable decision making capabilities to such systems is currently a significant challenge, especially to have flexible strategies with predictable performance in hard-to-predict conditions. My thesis first proposes a goal-oriented model to allow automated synthesis of distributed controllers, which implement and interact through models of different semantics. Scalability of descriptions is realized through defining the nature of interactions that can occur among decision modules while leaving to task of optimally implementing these interactions by the execution environment. Applications with data acquisition for CPS system are offered. The thesis also proposes an approach to performance predictive collaborative control of autonomous agents operating in environments with fixed targets. A trajectory generation algorithm which considers the physical characteristics of autonomous mobile agents, e.g., dimensions, weight, velocity constraints and many others. is used in modeling. An Integer Linear Programming based model is used to optimize collaboration to achieve maximum task accomplishment and flexibility. It also offers detailed experimental insight on the quality, scalability and computational complexity of the proposed method. Another important challenge for Cyber Physical Systems is data acquisition through groups of mobile agents to optimize monitoring. Each agent optimizes locally dose not necessarily result in overall optimization without global predictions. An asynchronous interaction scheme using gaming theory between agents to maximize the utility of the acquired data is purposed. Experiments study the effectiveness of the scheme in comprehensive data acquisition while minimizing redundant data collection.Item A Methodology for Design and Applications of Parallel Computers(The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY., 1-Dec-11) Zhang, Peng; Deng, Yuefan; Department of Applied Mathematics and StatisticsThis dissertation focuses on two aspects of parallel computing, i.e., development and applications of parallel computers. First, we introduce a new technique by strategically interlacing bypass rings to torus (iBT network) for generating more efficient grid-like interconnection networks. Second, we derive an algebraic formulation of mapping tasks to parallel computers with complex network architectures for realizing their potentials. Compared to the widely adopted mesh and torus network topologies, our new iBT network has many superior characteristics: (1) its network diameter and average node-to-node distances are significantly reduced; (2) the simplicity of a grid-like layout is preserved; (3) it outperforms other bypass torus networks; and (4) it has far more flexible network sizes. A mathematical model is further devised to analyze the dependencies of the iBT network diameters on bypass schemes, thus enabling discovery of a class of the most efficient bypass schemes for a given node degree and network size. Additionally, a pipelined broadcast algorithm for the all-port nodal ability is present and analyzed, demonstrating the collective performance. The iBT networks is finding broad applications in designing higher-dimensional and larger-scale parallel computers as the 3-D torus networks have done for parallel computers with fewer processors. We have developed a new formulation for the task mapping in efficient application of a parallel computer with complex networks such as iBT. The fact that the supply matrix, characterizing the network topologies, exhibits enormous symmetries allows us the transformation of the demand matrix measuring the communication demands of applications to derive a hop-byte objective function in terms of the eigen properties. This new eigen-based formulation dramatically reduces the complexity of finding the solutions for the objective functions from the conventional and widely adopted graph theory-based formulations. Numerical experiments with simulated annealing demonstrate such gains. This formulation enables solution of critical task mapping problems on large-scale parallel computers.