In distributed-memory multiprocessors, shared-memory programs utilize synchronization mechanisms to guarantee the correctness of accessing shared data. Traditionally, the mutually exclusive lock mechanism is the most commonly used method due to its simplicity. In this thesis research, we performed system performance evaluation of our hardware-supported lock management synchronization mechanism. This mechanism can detect the concurrency among critical sections using the same set of shared data. The concurrency detection is based upon the non-intersection of usage data sets and upon the non-conflicting accesses of the shared data. When a critical section releases an accessed data before leaving the critical section, other critical section can immediately be granted to access the data. Thus, two forms of concurrency among critical sections can be utilized. We designed a system simulator which consists of two main simulation modules and some other distributed multiprocessor system simulation modules. The first one is the simulation module of hardware lock requester residing in each processor node. The second one is the simulation module of hardware lock manager residing in selected processor nodes. On the software support, a compiler can analyze each critical section in the program on the set of possible utilized shared data and their read/write access types of the critical section. Then, it attaches this information in the machine program. Upon entering a critical section, the hardware lock requestor sends individual lock messages of the accessed shared data to corresponding hardware lock managers in other nodes. Each lock manager determine if some lock requests are conflict free and then rapidly grants the access rights by sending messages to the original lock requesters. The lock requester finally notifies the program with the critical section the permission to use the shared data. In this way, the concurrency among critical sections accessing the same set of shared data can be achieved as much as possible. In contrast, the mutually exclusive locking mechanism does not exhibit concurrency among critical sections accessing the same set of shared data. The hardware-software concurrency control mechanism studied in our research can detect non-conflicting situations among critical sections. Thus, it can enhance the actual program execution concurrency and improve the execution time of concurrent programs. In this thesis research, we designed the simulation environment of mesh-connected distributed multiprocessors with these two critical section synchronization mechanisms. We also planed multiple sets of concurrent program workload of various characteristics. We performed the performance experiments to compare these two critical section synchronization methods. It demonstrates that under different situations, our method can improve the execution performance of concurrent programs by various extent.

Counselor educators and counseling practitioners today reflect the future direction of the counseling profession; therefore, their opinions are important when discussing how professional counselors can reconcile the basic philosophies of humanistic counseling with the practical advantages and ethical and philosophical disadvantages that appear to be coexistent when discussing the diagnosis of clients and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV-Text Revision (DSM). This study sought to provide a reflective and concise description of the current perceptions of licensed professional counselors in reference to their training, their practice, and their dispositions about diagnosis and utilization of the DSM despite its theoretical grounding in the medical model and its chronic problems with gender and cultural bias—all in direct opposition to counseling's humanistic, multicultural model of practice. Results of this study suggested that more training in DSM/diagnosis led to participants' higher perception of their ability to diagnose and utilize the DSM; however, participants' perceptions were split on whether or not training should include psychopharmacology. Results also suggested that LPCs most frequently occurring ethical dilemma in relation to diagnosis involved the reimbursement requirements of insurance/managed care companies; however, they strongly disagreed that diagnosing clients conflicted with their counseling professional identity. Participants strongly agreed that they were multiculturally competent; however, those participants who indicated that they diagnose using a multicultural or wellness perspective did not agree that the DSM does not adequately present disorders in such a way as to allow LPCs to diagnose culturally diverse and female clients accurately.

This paper describes the design and implementation of MATLAB*G, a parallel MATLAB on the ALiCE Grid. ALiCE (Adaptive and scaLable internet-based Computing Engine), developed at NUS, is a lightweight grid-computing middleware. Grid applications in ALiCE are written in Java and use the distributed shared memory programming model. Utilizing existing MATLAB functions, MATLAB*G provides distributed matrix computation to the user through a set of simple commands. Currently two forms of parallelism for distributed matrix computation are implemented: task parallelism and job parallelism. Experiments are carried out to investigate the performance of MATLAB*G on each type of parallelism. Results indicate that for large matrix sizes MATLAB*G can be a faster alternative to sequential MATLAB. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

South Africa is experiencing a serious electricity supply problem. This problem is expected to persist until at least 2012. During the winter of 2006 load shedding and electricity supply-cuts started occurring in the Western Cape. These spread to the rest of the country during the summer of 2007. By January 2008 daily load shedding was a common occurrence across South Africa. In the 1990s the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME), the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) and Eskom started a national demand side management (DSM) programme with the help of energy services companies (ESCOs). The aim is to reduce demand peaks and to promote the efficient use of electricity. These projects can be implemented much faster than building new power stations and are also more cost-effective. In 2008 an accelerated DSM program was launched to address the electricity shortage in South Africa. Unfortunately, South African DSM projects experience the same sustainability problems as their counterparts overseas. These projects have been shown to be unsustainable over the five year projected life-span. There are various reasons for this, including client mismanagement and maintenance problems. An automated and rapid feedback system was identified as the best solution to address this problem. If plant personnel could be informed as soon as a DSM project's performance starts to decline, they would be able to respond much faster to rectify the problem. Reporting on DSM performance is difficult to achieve as these reports and the processing of measured data are time-consuming and presently no system exists to automate the process. A new feedback solution was developed to fully automate the process of data gathering, processing and reporting. The implemented solution reduced the number of man-hours spent by ESCOs' project engineers dramatically. In addition, project performance increased by 13% and showed an increase in over-performance of 12.8%, while financial savings for clients improved by an average of 12%. The feedback solution also provides the client with an accurate maintenance reporting system. This system can be implemented on all DSM projects, maximising Eskom's DSM investment. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Mechanical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

South Africa is experiencing a serious electricity supply problem. This problem is expected to persist until at least 2012. During the winter of 2006 load shedding and electricity supply-cuts started occurring in the Western Cape. These spread to the rest of the country during the summer of 2007. By January 2008 daily load shedding was a common occurrence across South Africa. In the 1990s the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME), the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) and Eskom started a national demand side management (DSM) programme with the help of energy services companies (ESCOs). The aim is to reduce demand peaks and to promote the efficient use of electricity. These projects can be implemented much faster than building new power stations and are also more cost-effective. In 2008 an accelerated DSM program was launched to address the electricity shortage in South Africa. Unfortunately, South African DSM projects experience the same sustainability problems as their counterparts overseas. These projects have been shown to be unsustainable over the five year projected life-span. There are various reasons for this, including client mismanagement and maintenance problems. An automated and rapid feedback system was identified as the best solution to address this problem. If plant personnel could be informed as soon as a DSM project's performance starts to decline, they would be able to respond much faster to rectify the problem. Reporting on DSM performance is difficult to achieve as these reports and the processing of measured data are time-consuming and presently no system exists to automate the process. A new feedback solution was developed to fully automate the process of data gathering, processing and reporting. The implemented solution reduced the number of man-hours spent by ESCOs' project engineers dramatically. In addition, project performance increased by 13% and showed an increase in over-performance of 12.8%, while financial savings for clients improved by an average of 12%. The feedback solution also provides the client with an accurate maintenance reporting system. This system can be implemented on all DSM projects, maximising Eskom's DSM investment. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Mechanical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

To qualify for a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder the DSM-IV requires that individuals report dominant emotions of fear, helplessness, and horror during the trauma. Despite this stipulation, traumatic events can elicit a myriad of emotions other than fear such as anger, guilt or shame, sadness, and numbing. The present study examined which emotional reactions to a stressful event in a college student sample are associated with the highest levels of PTSD symptoms. Results suggest mixed support for the DSM-IV criteria. Although participants who experienced a dominant emotion of fear reported high PTSD symptomatology, participants who experienced anger, disgust-related emotions, and sadness reported PTSD symptoms of equivalent severity. Participants also reported experiencing other emotions more frequently than they reported experiencing fear. Coping style was unrelated to dominant emotion experienced; however, dysfunctional coping was associated with worse outcomes in terms of PTSD symptoms. These results have diagnostic and treatment limitations.

Shared memory systems, such as SMP and ccNUMA topologies, simplify programming and administration. On the other hand, systems without hardware support for shared memory, such as clusters of commodity workstations, are commonly used due to cost and flexibility considerations. In this thesis, virtualisation is proposed as a technique that can bridge the gap between these architectures. The resulting system, vNUMA, is a hypervisor with a unique feature: it provides the illusion of shared memory across separate nodes on a fast network. This allows a cluster of workstations to be transformed into a single shared memory multiprocessor, supporting existing operating systems and applications. Such an approach could also have applications for emerging highly-parallel architectures, allowing a shared memory programming model to be retained while reducing hardware complexity. To build such a system, it is necessary to meld both a high-performance hypervisor and a high-performance distributed shared memory (DSM) system. This thesis addresses the challenges inherent in both of these tasks. First, designing an efficient hypervisor layer is considered; since vNUMA is implemented on the Itanium processor architecture, this is with particular reference to Itanium processor virtualisation. Then, novel DSM protocols are developed that allow SMP consistency models to be reproduced while providing better performance than a simple atomically-consistent DSM system. Finally, the system is evaluated, proving that it can provide good performance and compelling advantages for a variety of applications.

“Adaptation – in the clutches of a discourse” is a project that investigates a discursive power and knowledge production. The project uses perspectives from philosophy, phenomenology, sociology, social constructivism and discourse theory in order to get a multilayered understanding of the uses of one manifested standardisation of normality or rather abnormality – the DSM manual. The DSM - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders – is an American manual used worldwide to understand mental disorders or irregularities. The inherent checklists that are used to diagnose individuals are based on the notions of normality within society. The DSM is constituted of checklists of different symptoms in behaviour, mood or other physiological effects that signifies mental disorders. How do the DSM and the uses of the DSM reflect the society? In the answer you will find economical, political and structural interests in using standardized ways of explaining the mental irregularities or differences of the human being.

Shared memory systems, such as SMP and ccNUMA topologies, simplify programming and administration. On the other hand, systems without hardware support for shared memory, such as clusters of commodity workstations, are commonly used due to cost and flexibility considerations. In this thesis, virtualisation is proposed as a technique that can bridge the gap between these architectures. The resulting system, vNUMA, is a hypervisor with a unique feature: it provides the illusion of shared memory across separate nodes on a fast network. This allows a cluster of workstations to be transformed into a single shared memory multiprocessor, supporting existing operating systems and applications. Such an approach could also have applications for emerging highly-parallel architectures, allowing a shared memory programming model to be retained while reducing hardware complexity. To build such a system, it is necessary to meld both a high-performance hypervisor and a high-performance distributed shared memory (DSM) system. This thesis addresses the challenges inherent in both of these tasks. First, designing an efficient hypervisor layer is considered; since vNUMA is implemented on the Itanium processor architecture, this is with particular reference to Itanium processor virtualisation. Then, novel DSM protocols are developed that allow SMP consistency models to be reproduced while providing better performance than a simple atomically-consistent DSM system. Finally, the system is evaluated, proving that it can provide good performance and compelling advantages for a variety of applications.

Bachelor-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2004.