Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 5, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Βασικός σκοπός της εργασίας αυτής, είναι η μελέτη και σχεδίαση ενός κυκλώματος ανάγνωσης χωρητικού βιοαισθητήρα χρησιμοποιώντας τάση αναφοράς. Τα κυκλώματα αυτά αποτελούν βασικό τμήμα σε πολλά ολοκληρωμένα κυκλώματα, καθώς μπορούν να παρέχουν σταθερή τάση. Αρχικά εξετάζεται η αρχή λειτουργίας τους, και παρουσιάζοντα κάποιες βασικές τοπολογίες που εφαρμόσθηκαν σε CMOS τεχνολογίες. Καθώς οι τεχνολογικές εξελίξεις επιβάλλουν όσο το δυνατόν χαμηλότερη κατανάλωση και οικονομία σε επιφάνεια πυριτίου η σχεδίαση επιλέγεται να πραγματοποιηθεί σε γνωστή CMOS τεχνολογία 90nm, με την βοήθεια του εργαλείου Cadence. Σκοπός είναι από την τάση εξόδου του κυκλώματος να μπορει να βρεθεί η διαφορά της χωρητικότητας των πυκνωτών της εισόδου. Αυτή η τάση στη συνέχεια μπορεί να δοθεί για ψηφιακή επεξεργασία, αφού περάσει από έναν ADC.Η τροφοδοσία του κυκλώματος ήταν στα 2.5 Volts και στις εξομοιώσεις που παρατίθενται παρουσιάστηκαν ικανοποιητικά επίπεδα θορύβου στην συχνότητα 1kHZ. / The subject of this thesis is the study and analysis of a readout circuit with capacitive biosensor using voltage reference. Being able to provide a stable output voltage, these circuits are indispensable building block of many analog integrated circuits. The first and second chapters discuss the operating principle and some conventional bandgap circuits, which have been introduced in CMOS technologies. As the process technologies are developing and impose constraints, such as low-power consumption and downscaling the expense of silicon area, the design option was a popular CMOS 90 nm technology, with the aid of the software program Cadence. The purpose of the circuit studied is to find the input capacitors differences from the output voltage. This output voltage can then be paid for digital processing, after passing through an ADC. The power circuit was at 2.5 Volts and at the simulations presented satisfactory noise level at 1kHZ.

Software projects are not developed in isolation. Open source software projects encourage a networked collaboration and interdependence across projects and developers. Recent research has shifted to studying software ecosystems, communities of projects that depend on each other and are developed together. However, identifying technical dependencies at the ecosystem level can be challenging. In this dissertation, we propose a new method, known as reference coupling, for detecting technical dependencies between projects. The method establishes dependencies through user-specified cross-references between projects. We use our method to identify ecosystems in GitHub hosted projects, and we identify several characteristics of the identified ecosystems. Our findings show that most ecosystems are centered around one project and are interconnected with other ecosystems. The predominant type of ecosystems are those that develop tools to support software development. We also found that the project owners’ social behavior aligns well with the technical dependencies within the ecosystem, but project contributors’ social behavior does not align with these dependencies. We conclude with a discussion on future research that is enabled by our reference coupling method. / Graduate / harrison.franc@gmail.com

El seguimiento referencial es abordado desde un enfoque funcional-cognitivo y desde una perspectiva tipológica dando cuenta de los mecanismos que esta lengua usa para codificar la referencia y mantener la cohesión a lo largo del texto. Este es un estudio sobre el discurso náhuatl. El análisis está basado en la Estructura de la Información (EI) y la Coherencia Discursiva que se ha documentado por medio del fenómeno lingüístico conocido como seguimiento de la referencia. / The reference tracking is introduced from approach cognitive-functionalist and from a typological view to shed light on the mechanisms that this language uses to codify the reference and keep cohesion along the text. This study is about Nahuatl discourse. The analysis is based on Information Structure (IS) and Discursive Coherence. It is explored through the linguistic phenomenon named reference tracking.

A critical function of the human visual system is to parse objects from the larger context of the environment, allowing for the identification of, and potential interaction with, those objects. The use of contextual information allows us to rapidly locate, identify, and interact with objects that appear in the environment. Contextual information can help specify an object's location within the environment (allocentric encoding) or with respect to the observer (egocentric encoding). Understanding how contextual information influences perceptual organization, and the neural systems that process a complex scene, is critical in understanding how contextual information assists in parsing local information from background. In the real world, relying on context is typically beneficial, as most objects occur in circumscribed environments. However, there are circumstances in which context can harm performance. In the case of visual illusions, relying on the context can bias observers' perceptions and cause significant motor errors. Studying the illusory conditions under which perceptual/motor functions are "fooled", or breakdown, can provide valuable information about how the brain computes allocentric and egocentric frames of reference. The following studies examine how attentional (Chapters II & III) manipulations of visuospatial context affect components of observers' egocentric reference frames (e.g., perceived vertical or subjective midline) and how neural manipulations (Chapter IV) can modulate observers' reliance on contextual information. In Chapter II, the role of attentional control settings on contextual processing is examined. Chapter III addresses the question of how visuospatial shifts of attention interact with an egocentric frame of reference. Finally, Chapter IV examines the functional role of superior parietal cortex in the processing of egocentric contextual information.

My model-theoretic realist account of science places linguistic systems and the corresponding non-linguistic structures at different stages of the scientific process. It is shown that science and its progress cannot be analysed in terms of only one of these strata. Philosophy of science literature offers mainly two approaches to the structure of scientific knowledge analysed in terms of theories and their models, the "statement" and the "non-statement" approaches. In opposition to the statement approach's belief that scientific knowledge is embodied in theories (formulated in some (first-order) symbolic language) with direct interpretative links - via so-called "bridge principles" - to reality, the defenders of the non-statement approach believe in an analysis where the language in which the theory is formulated plays a much smaller role than the (mathematical) structures which satisfy that theory. The model-theoretic realism expounded here retains the notion of a scientific theory as a (deductively closed) set of sentences, while simultaneously emphasising the interpretative role of the conceptual (i.a. mathematical) models of these theories. My criticism against the non-statement approach is based on the fact that merely "giving" the theory "in terms of' its mathematical structures leaves out any real interpretation of the nature and role of general terms in science. Against the statement approach's "direct" linking of general theoretical terms to reality, my approach interpolates models between theories and (aspects of) reality in the interpretative chain. The links between the general terms of scientific theories and their interpretations in the various models of the theory regulate the whole referential process. The terms of a theory are "general" in the sense that they are the result of certain abstractive conceptualisations of the object of scientific investigation and subsequent linguistic formulations of these conceptualisations. Their (particular) meanings can be "given back" only by interpreting them in the limited context of the various conceptual models of their theory and, finally, by finding an isomorphic relation between some substructure of the conceptual model in question and some empirical conceptualisation (model) of relevant experimental data. In this sense the notion of scientific "truth" becomes inextricably linked with that of articulated reference, as it - given its model-dependent nature - should be. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)

Esta dissertação versa sobre a comunicação. Para tanto, partimos da consideração do fenômeno da comunicação no campo da linguística, através dos aportes de Ferdinand de Saussure, Émile Benveniste e Roman Jakobson. No entanto, como tal fenômeno extrapola o terreno da linguística, buscou-se as contribuições de Bronislaw Malinowski, no campo da antropologia, e de Dany-Robert Dufour, de Adriana Cavarero e de Giorgio Agamben, no campo da filosofia. Esse percurso, que parte da pergunta sobre o lugar da comunicação nos estudos sobre a língua, acaba por colocar foco no lugar da comunicação na vida do homem, homem enquanto produtor e efeito de sentidos. / This dissertation aims at talking about communication. In order to do this, we started by considering the communication phenomenon within the field of linguistics, reading Ferdinand de Saussure, Émile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson. Nevertheless, as this phenomenon surpasses the field of linguistics, we have searched for the contributions of Bronislaw Malinowski, in the anthropological field, and Dany-Robert Dufour, Adriana Cavarero, and Giorgio Agamben, in the field of philosophy. This course, which originates from the question about the place communication has in the studies of language, ends up focusing on the place communication has in our lives, the lives of men as producer and effect of senses.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T15:33:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_8359_Doctoral_Thesis_NARDI_2014.pdf: 6283699 bytes, checksum: b714f48398e126539d557c6e84aa0422 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-10 / Nowadays, the notion of service has been widely adopted in the practice of economic sectors (e.g., Service, Manufacturing, and Extractive sectors), as well as, in the research focus of various disciplines (e.g., Marketing, Business, and Computer Science). Due to that, a number of research initiatives (e.g., service ontologies, conceptual models, and theories) have tried to understand and characterize the complex notion of service. However, due to particular views of these disciplines and economic sectors, a number of different characterizations of service (e.g., service as interaction, service as co-creation of value, and service as capability / manifestation of competence, among others) have been proposed. The existence of these various non-harmonized characterizations, and the focus on a terminological debate about the service concept, instead of about the service phenomena from a broad perspective, make the establishment of a unified body of knowledge for service difficult. This limitation impacts, e.g., the establishment of unified conceptualization for supporting the smooth alignment between Business and IT views in service-oriented enterprise architecture (SoEA), and the design and usage of service modeling languages. In this thesis we define a theoretical foundation for service based on the notion of service commitment and claims as basic elements in the characterization of service relations along service life-cycle phases (service offer, service negotiation, and service delivery). As discussed in this work, this theoretical foundation is capable of harmonizing a number of service perspectives found in the literature. Such theoretical foundation is specified in a well-founded core reference ontology, named UFO-S, which was designed by adopting a sound ontological engineering apparatus (mainly, a well-founded ontology representation language, OntoUML, and approaches of model verification and model validation). As a kind of theory, UFO-S was applied in the analysis of SoEA structuring principles in order to define a commitment-based SoEA view, which remarks social aspects inherent in service relations usually underexplored in widely adopted service-oriented approaches (such as SOA-RM by OASIS, ITIL, and ArchiMate). Based on this, UFO-S was also applied in an ontological analysis of service modeling at ArchiMates Business layer. Such ontological analysis showed some limitations concerned to semantic ambiguity and lack of expressiveness for representing service offerings (and type thereof) and service agreements in SoEA. In order to address these limitations, three service modeling patterns (service offering type pattern, service offering pattern, and service agreement pattern) were proposed taking as basis UFO-S. The usefulness of these patterns for addressing these limitations was evidentiated by means of an empirical evaluation. Finally, we can say that, beyond offering a broad and well-founded theoretical foundation for service able to harmonize service perspectives, UFO-S presented benefits as a reference model in the analysis of SoEA structuring principles, and in the (re)design of service modeling languages.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-08-05Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:08:04Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 souza_fq_me_ilha.pdf: 803035 bytes, checksum: 9aab0ce0802cfc37e761960c21f93140 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Referências de tensão integradas com baixa sensibilidade à temperatura, tensão de a- limentação e eventos transitórios são componentes críticos na maioria dos circuitos integra- dos. Neste trabalho, além das restrições costumeiras, foi adicionada a preocupação com a in- terferência eletromagnética a qual vem ganhando muita importância devido a crescente polui- ção eletromagnética no ambiente. Assim, neste trabalho, propõe-se o projeto de uma referên- cia de tensão tipo bandgap com baixa susceptibilidade a interferência eletromagnética (EMI). O projeto deste circuito baseia-se na soma de duas correntes (referência de tensão baseada em corrente), uma com coeficiente complementar a temperatura absoluta (CTAT) e outra com coeficiente proporcional à temperatura absoluta (PTAT), aplicada sobre um resistor. Neste projeto, a susceptibilidade a interferência eletromagnética de uma referência de tensão band- gap é estudada por meio de simulação. Projetada para ser fabricada com a tecnologia CMOS 0,35 μm da AMS (Autriamicrosystems), a referência forneceu uma tensão de referência está- vel de 1,354 V em sua saída operando normalmente na faixa de temperatura de -40 a 150oC. Quando submetido à EMI, o circuito exibiu apenas 24,7 mV (quando filtros capacitivos são incluído) de offset induzido, para um sinal de interferência variando de 150 kHz a 1 GHz / Integrated voltage references with low sensitivity to temperature, supply voltage and transient events are critical requirements in the most of integrated circuits. In this work, be- sides the usual restrictions, was added to concern with electromagnetic interference which is gaining much importance due to increasing electromagnetic pollution on the environment. So, in this work, proposes the design of a bandgap voltage reference with low susceptibility to electromagnetic interference (EMI) is proposed. The design of the circuit is based on the sum of two currents (current-based voltage reference), one with coefficient complementary to ab- solute temperature (CTAT) and the other with coefficient proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) into a resistor. In this work, the susceptibility to electromagnetic interference in a bandgap voltage reference is evaluated by simulations. Designed to be implemented in AMS (Autriamicrosystems) 0,35 μm CMOS process, the reference provides a stable voltage refer- ence equal to 1,354 V in the output working properly in the temperature range of -40 to 150oC. When EMI is injected, the circuit exhibits only 24,7 mV (when capacitive filters are included) of induced offset, for an interference signal varying in the frequency range of 150 kHz to 1 GHz

This diploma paper deals with the state graduation exam in German with a focus on its development. At first this issue is depictured on the theoretical level where I describe the genesis of the state graduation exam in the Czech Republic and its comparison with the state graduation exam in Germany, concretely in Saxony. Furthermore there is also mentioned the educational problems and problems with the preparation of the teachers for the new graduation model. In this part I also describe the European reference framework for languages. In the second, practical part of my diploma paper there is a questionnaire both for the German teachers at high schools and for the students who decided to sit for the leaving examination in German. Both these questionnaires are related to their opinion on the forthcoming state graduation exam.