Rapid progress in ultra-intense laser technology has resulted in intensity levels surpassing 1022 W/cm2, reaching the highest possible density of electromagnetic energy amongst all controlled sources available in the laboratory. During recent decades, fast growth in available intensity has stimulated numerous studies based on the use of high intensity lasers as a unique tool for the initiation of nonlinear behavior in various basic systems: first molecules and atoms, then plasma resulting from the ionization of gases and solids, and, finally, pure vacuum. Apart from their fundamental importance, these studies reveal various mechanisms for the conversion of a laser pulse's energy into other forms, opening up new possibilities for generating beams of energetic particles and radiation with tailored properties. In particular, the cheapness and compactness of laser based sources of energetic protons are expected to make a revolution in medicine and industry.   In this thesis we study nonlinear phenomena in the process of laser radiation interacting with plasmas of ionized targets. We develop advanced numerical tools and use them for the simulation of laser-plasma interactions in various configurations relating to both current and proposed experiments. Phenomenological analysis of numerical results helps us to reveal several new effects, understand the physics behind them and develop related theoretical models capable of making general conclusions and predictions. We develop target designs to use studied effects for charged particle acceleration and for the generation of attosecond pulses of unprecedented intensity. Finally, we analyze prospects for experimental activity at the upcoming international high intensity laser facilities and uncover a basic effect of anomalous radiative trapping, which opens up new possibilities for fundamental science.

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an emerging field in civil engineering in recent years. The main objectives of the SHM are to identify structural integrity issues at early stage and improve the structural safety through measuring and analyzing structural behaviors. Sensing systems for SHM can be used to identify applied vehicle loads for bridge structures. Bridge weigh-in-motion (BWIM) is one type of such vehicle load identification. As a tool to monitor the vehicle weight moving on the bridges, BWIM uses the structural responses induced by moving vehicle on the bridge to back-calculate vehicle information. In this thesis, optimized BWIM systems using multimetric measurements will be investigated. In Chapter 1, the concept and background of BWIM systems will be introduced. The objective of this research will be also demonstrated in this chapter. Chapter 2 is the literature review section. In Chapter 3, the finite element bridge model adopted for this study will be described. In this section, the moving-load time history analysis, sectional properties for bridge members, and other structural parameters of bridge model will be introduced. The methodology of BWIM systems used in this study will be demonstrated in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, optimized sensor locations for BWIM using normal and shear strain measurements and acceleration measurement will be discussed for the case without measurement noise. In Chapter 6, sensor location optimization for the case considering measurement noises will be investigated. A new acceleration-based BWIM method is proposed in this section. Non-drift displacement reconstruction technique using acceleration measurement and FIR filtering is applied for BWIM. Finally, Chapter 7 is the conclusion part of this thesis.

Significant X-ray variability and flaring has been observed from Sgr A* but is poorly understood from a theoretical standpoint. We perform general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations that take into account a population of non-thermal electrons with energy distributions and injection rates that are motivated by PIC simulations of magnetic reconnection. We explore the effects of including these non-thermal electrons on the predicted broadband variability of Sgr A* and find that X-ray variability is a generic result of localizing non-thermal electrons to highly magnetized regions, where particles are likely to be accelerated via magnetic reconnection. The proximity of these high-field regions to the event horizon forms a natural connection between IR and X-ray variability and accounts for the rapid timescales associated with the X-ray flares. The qualitative nature of this variability is consistent with observations, producing X-ray flares that are always coincident with IR flares, but not vice versa, i.e., there are a number of IR flares without X-ray counterparts.

Les avancées dans le domaine de la bioinformatique ont ouvert de nouveaux horizons pour la recherche en biologie et en pharmacologie. Les machines comme les algorithmes utilisées aujourd'hui ne sont cependant plus en mesure de répondre à la demande exponentiellement croissante en puissance de calcul. Il existe donc un besoin pour des plate-formes de calculs spécialisées pour ce types de traitement, qui sauraient tirer partie de l'ensemble des technologie de calcul parallèle actuelles (Grilles, multi-coeurs, GPU, FPGA). Dans cette thèse nous étudions comment l'utilisation d'outils de synthèse de haut niveau peut aider à la conception d'accélérateurs matériels spécialisés massivement parallèles. Ces outils permettent de réduire considérablement les temps de conception mais ne sont pas conçus pour produire des architectures matérielles massivement parallèles efficaces. Les travaux de cette thèse se sont attachés à dégager des techniques de parallélisation, ainsi que les moyens d'exprimer efficacement ce parallélisme, pour des outils de type HLS. Nous avons appliqué ces résultats à une application de bioinformatique connue sous le nom de HMMER. Cet algorithme qui pourrait être un bon candidat à une accélération matérielle est très délicat à paralléliser. Nous avons proposé un schéma d'exécution parallèle original, basé sur une réécriture mathématique de l'algorithme, qui a été suivi par une exploration des schéma d'exécution matériels possible sur FPGA. Ce résultat à ensuite donnée lieu à une mise en œuvre sur un accélérateur matériel et a démontré des facteurs d'accélération encourageants. Les travaux démontre également la pertinence des outils de HLS pour la conception d'accélérateur matériel pour le calcul haute performance en Bioinformatique, à la fois pour réduire les temps de conception, mais aussi pour obtenir des architectures plus efficaces et plus facilement reciblables d'un plateforme à une autre. / The revolutionary advancements in the field of bioinformatics have opened new horizons in biological and pharmaceutical research. However, the existing bioinformatics tools are unable to meet the computational demands, due to the recent exponential growth in biological data. So there is a dire need to build future bioinformatics platforms incorporating modern parallel computation techniques. In this work, we investigate FPGA based acceleration of these applications, using High-Level Synthesis. High-Level Synthesis tools enable automatic translation of abstract specifications to the hardware design, considerably reducing the design efforts. However, the generation of an efficient hardware using these tools is often a challenge for the designers. Our research effort encompasses an exploration of the techniques and practices, that can lead to the generation of an efficient design from these high-level synthesis tools. We illustrate our methodology by accelerating a widely used application -- HMMER -- in bioinformatics community. HMMER is well-known for its compute-intensive kernels and data dependencies that lead to a sequential execution. We propose an original parallelization scheme based on rewriting of its mathematical formulation, followed by an in-depth exploration of hardware mapping techniques of these kernels, and finally show on-board acceleration results. Our research work demonstrates designing flexible hardware accelerators for bioinformatics applications, using design methodologies which are more efficient than the traditional ones, and where resulting designs are scalable enough to meet the future requirements.

The following thesis deals with psychological time, duration of time and primarily the subjective speed of time. In the theoretical part the theories of time perception and the theories of time acceleration with age are presented. In the empirical part a hypothesis about the acceleration of subjective time with age is tested. In contrast to popularly held view that time passes faster with increasing age, empirical data do not support this assumption. A questionnaire mapping the impressions of the speed of time was administered to a sample of 101 respondents from three age groups (adolescents, adults and seniors). The newly developed Subjective time speed inventory (ISRČ) and Zimbardo time perspective inventory (ZTPI) were also included. Most respondents agree with the statement that time seems to pass faster now than before and that time seems to pass fast. Testing the main research hypothesis about the acceleration of time with age, however, finds no significant differences in perceived speed of time along with age (Kruskal-Wallis test). Significant difference in relation to age was found only in the speed measurement by means of ISRČ (Kruskal-Wallis test). Adolescents achieved significantly higher raw score than adults and seniors by means of ISRČ (Mann-Whitney U test). This result implies that...

Title: Hypokinetic load Identificators by driving vehicle Objectives: Development and testing of methods for determining changes in the mechanical parameters of the axial system of professional long-distance drivers. Design and testing procedure for clinical and physical examination sensitive to changes, that occur due to vibration and static load when driving the truck. Methods: TVS method, morphology of the spine, measurement of vibration exposure Results: TVS method that was used in the thesis has proved to provide information on the resonant frequency of the resonant frequency and the total attenuation of the spine with sufficient precision to ride their influence was clearly identifiable. Used accelerometer measurement of oscillations vibrational excitation spine has also proved applicable and provides objective parameters. Keywords: TVS method, vibration, hypokinesia, acceleration, driving, LBP

Master of Science / Department of Electrical Engineering / Dwight Day / Power consumption has become a large concern in many systems including portable electronics and supercomputers. Creating efficient hardware that can do more computation with less power is highly desirable. This project proposes a possible avenue to complete this goal by hardware accelerating a conjugate gradient solve using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). This method uses three basic operations frequently: dot product, weighted vector addition, and sparse matrix vector multiply. Each operation was accelerated on the FPGA. A power monitor was also implemented to measure the power consumption of the FPGA during each operation with several different implementations. Results showed that a decrease in time can be achieved with the dot product being hardware accelerated in relation to a software only approach. However, the more memory intensive operations were slowed using the current architecture for hardware acceleration.

Off-highway vehicles are on the verge of switching from analog to digital video camera technology (VCT), which offers better video quality and new features but adds complexity to the system. This thesis project aims to implement the digital VCT to the display computer CCpilot VA intended for off-highway vehicles. In this project the differences between analog and digital VCTs were reviewed and then a demo displaying a live digital camera video feed on the embedded Linux based display computer CCpilot VA was implemented with Qt and QML. More specifically, different GStreamer pipelines were tested, as Qt uses GStreamer to play video, and camera settings were changed using the ISO 17215 standard.  The demo displayed a live digital camera video feed with high quality, low latency and high frame rate on the VA by using a GStreamer pipeline utilizing hardware decoding. The results have shown that digital video cameras perform better than analog cameras, primarily because digital cameras have better video quality. The attempts to simultaneously display a video feed and a Graphical User Interface created by Qt have been made. However, they were only successful with poor video performance. A zero-copy link between the GStreamer pipeline’s decoder and sink element must be used to obtain good video performance.

Syftet med denna studie är att belysa hur engagerade matematiklärare anser att de möjliggör undervisning som stimulerar högpresterande och särbegåvade elever i matematikklassrummet. För att undersöka detta genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuer där tio lärare beskrev sin undervisning samt eventuella hinder för att genomföra den undervisning de ansåg eftersträvansvärd. När intervjuerna analyserades utifrån begreppen berikning och acceleration framkom det att fördjupning och breddning av lärostoffet förekom i hög grad, såväl i aktiviteter riktade till enskilda elever som i helklassaktiviteter. Lärarna möjliggjorde även att eleverna kunde gå snabbare fram genom kursinnehållet, och tiden de tjänade användes huvudsakligen till fördjupning. Alltså förekom både acceleration och berikning. Utöver acceleration och berikning betonade även lärarna vikten av att skapa en god relation med eleven samt att de strävade mot att främja ett lustfyllt lärande snarare än ett prestationsinriktat. De hinder som framkom indikerar att det till stor del är upp till den enskilda läraren att stimulera dessa elever.

This thesis objective is to present a suitable high acceleration test method for SAAB Dynamics. SAAB is in need for an easy to use and cheaper way to test components such as the fuze and electrical components embedded in the fuze system. SAAB Dynamics develops ground combat weapon systems for the global market as well as civilian products. Products produced by SAAB are being used in armed combat, making this thesis project somewhat controversial. However, the concept produced by this work can be used in civilian applications such as aeronautics, space and material science. This thesis focused on using systematical methods and research to gain as much knowledge about the needs and demands of the customer, in this thesis SAAB. The project presents its own concepts as a valid option instead of buying one from a supplier. The concept is based on the needs of SAAB and is generated through creative brainstorming sessions and a morphological matrix. The concept was benchmarked together with similar test methods and test benches on the market. In order to be able to present a suitable concept the project conducted a large feasibility study of the fuze system and the products in need of testing as well as how other industries test similar acceleration and impacts. The concept consists of a high-grade industrial compressor in order to generate high air pressure inside a pressure chamber. The built up pressure breaks a sensitive disc and releases the air into the launch chamber. In the launch chamber, the projectile accelerates through a rifled pipe and then travels freely in a wider pipe. The projectile then deaccelerates when impact occurs with an energy absorption material such as aluminum honeycomb or foam.