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No description available.

The social impacts of new information technology have attracted much attention in recent years. This study looked at the personal computer's impact on the public library's services and functions. Particular attention was paid to the public access personal computer. The method involved a Baseline survey to establish the availability and use of public access personal computers in Australian public libraries and a Delphi survey to consider possible futures. The researcher's framework was drawn from reviews of the literatures on futures research; new information technology and its social impacts; the development and current situation of the public library; and innovation research. The Baseline survey revealed that public access personal computers were becoming increasingly common in public libraries, though their provision was not yet widespread. Existing and planned uses included games, literacy and various other educational activities. Overall the public access personal computer was viewed as a favourable innovation with the part it could play in developing community computer literacy receiving particular attention. The Delphi panel was comprised of 25 public librarians selected on the basis of their knowledge about computers in public libraries. The 41 Event Statements postulated a wide range of changes in - (1) the nature and method of service provision; (2) the patterns of client demand and use; and, (3) financial allocations. The results revealed greater variability of opinion about the likely time of occurrence of the Events than about their desirability. A high level of opinion change between the two Rounds did not produce much movement toward consensus - indicating that the panel had varied views of the future. Comment on both surveys indicated that the librarians were keen to develop services relevant to their communities and if public access personal computers were such a service they would strive to provide them. The Delphi survey proved a good vehicle for encouraging consideration of the future and further research using the method seems warranted.

The semiconductor industry has seen a paradigm shift from Application Specific Integrated Circuits to Multiprocessor System on Chip systems over the last decade, primarily due to the miniaturization of the transistor. However, billion of transistors available on a single chip need to be used efficiently to provide more functionalities in portable devices, yet minimize power and chip area, which increases the design complexity of multiprocessor systems. Tighter time to market deadlines further pressurizes the designer, requiring a comprehensive automation of the design process of such complex multiprocessor systems. This thesis presents a design automation methodology for the design of Multiprocessor System on Chip (MPSoC) systems for multimedia applications. This thesis introduces a heterogeneous multiprocessor system where processing elements are connected in a pipelined fashion. A multimedia application is executed very efficiently on a pipelined system due to the stream oriented data flow nature of such applications. Application Specific Instruction set Processors (ASIPs) are used as the elementary processing elements in the multiprocessor system as they can be customized according to the application tasks assigned to them. The problem of selecting a processor configuration for each of the ASIPs in the pipelined system is formalized. We present three different techniques to select processor configurations by exploring the design space of an ASIP based pipelined system, and integrating them into a flexible and designer driven design flow for efficient exploration of large design spaces in order of 10^16 design points. The first two techniques are based on Integer Linear Programming (ILP), named Exact ILP formulation (EIF) and Reduced ILP formulation (RIF), while the third technique is based on a novel heuristic. We also developed a design space pruning algorithm that can enable the use of EIF and RIF to obtain optimal or near optimal design points from large design spaces. For four multimedia applications, we show that RIF and the heuristic can explore the design space and reveal the Pareto front in several hours, while EIF took several days to obtain the Pareto front. The quick availability of the Pareto front of a design space will help the designer to make early changes in the design. Furthermore, it is shown that, on average, the error incurred by RIF and the heuristic is within 1.25% and 2.25% of the optimal design points obtained via EIF for all the four multimedia applications. In the worst case, RIF introduced an error of 17.08% while the heuristic had an error of 11.39%.

Assembly Sequence Planning (ASP) is part of Assembly Planning. The assembly sequence is the most important part of an assembly plan. Assembly has an important share in both lead time and cost of a product. Therefore, its optimisation is necessary to ensure the competitivity of manufactured goods. The aim of this thesis is the optimisation of assembly sequences for mechanical products, for real/realistic problems and constraints. This thesis represents an integrated approach in assembly sequence planning and optimisation. It tackles real problems by building the generality in the models. The ASP problem is a large scale, highly constrained, combinatorial problem, with an extraordinarily diverse character. Assembly can address sequential or non-sequential, linear or non-linear, monotone or non-monotone, coherent or non-coherent assembly plans or any combination of those, involving rigid, elastic, non elastic, solid, liquid or gaseous components or subassemblies. To be applicable in practice and useful, an assembly sequence planning and optimisation algorithm has to be general enough to accommodate any type of assembly plan and component. For this reason, modelling becomes critically important. A model has been developed for the assembly process, to determine what the assembly process is in mathematical terms. A second model has been developed to model/represent assembly plans as chromosomes that encode any type and combination of assembly plans. Another model has been developed for modelling/representing products for assembly. This model constitutes the database containing all information necessary for generating feasible assembly sequences, for any type of component and subassembly. A framework has been developed for the definition of a fitness function to assess the quality of an assembly sequence and plan from optimisation criteria. Solving the ASP problem (prior to its optimisation), implies generating a sequence to assemble an n-part product given its description and a number of supplementary constraints. A guided search algorithm has been developed to solve the ASP problem. To optimise the ASP, Genetic Algorithms (GA) were used in this research. The GA has a classic structure and modified genetic operators: it only generates and manipulates legal and feasible chromosomes. An initial population of feasible chromosomes is generated through guided search. This population, then, undergoes transformations over a number of generations, through crossover and selection. The crossover, based on the guided search algorithm, is also designed to produce only legal chromosomes. The selection is a classical operation, through a weighed roulette algorithm. It operates on an extended population of parent and children chromosomes. The output of the GA is a population of chromosomes with a high fitness value, corresponding to optimal/near optimal assembly sequences, from which the best one is selected. A number of examples are used in each chapter to illustrate each significant aspect considered. A final example illustrates the application of the whole algorithm to produce optimised assembly sequences for an industrial-size product. / thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2003.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2005. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. Linköping : Univ.

Zugl.: Karlsruhe, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.