To the general purpose microprocessors, we often need to change microprocessors¡¦ hardware architecture because of customized purpose. But already existing application program is incompatible to the new hardware architecture, and increase the product¡¦s development period. In this thesis, we discuss the modification of two kinds of hardware architecture, include new instruction set extension and change the size of datapath to deal with specific application. To the former, our laboratory develop a 32-bit microprocessor SYS32-TM, increase MME instruction set to deal with multimedia application. The latter, based on Thumb instruction set , we develop 16-bit microprocessor SYS16-TM, we modify its¡¦ datapath from 32-bit to 16-bit, we will show how to let already existing application program can execute on the new hardware architecture. In SYS32-TM, we use the way of inline assembly to embedded MME instruction set in C source code, we have to modify the assembler, define and parse the MME instruction set, so the assembler can recognize it. In SYS16-TM, we have sign extension and address offset problems, we have to modify the compiler backend¡¦s machine description to solve the sign extension and address offset instruction set behavior, and modify the library. To build SYS16-TM software environment, we have to set C Run Time Environment in Thumb mode, not support exchange between ARM mode and Thumb mode, and write the correct linker script, to set the program start address in 0x0000, to solve ARM¡¦s initial program start address in 0x8000. As a result, In SYS32-TM, we use assembler to identify the MME instruction set can embedded in existing C source code. In SYS16-TM, we execute the testbench include sorts, Hanoi, Fibonacci number etc, and use simulator to verify its¡¦ correctness.

The kinematic characteristics of 17 elite male cross-country skiers competing in the 50 km race of the 1992 Winter Olympic Games were determined. Each skier used the open field skating technique, one of four skating techniques used in free technique cross-country ski races. Skiers were filmed by the use of three video cameras, placed at a filming site on a flat portion of the racing course. Digitized data from the video were used to determine selected kinematic parameters which included: cycle velocity; cycle length; cycle rate; center of mass (CM) velocity vector angle; CM lateral displacement; CM lateral velocity; CM horizontal velocity; ski angles; ski edging angles; several types of pole angles; and hip, knee, and trunk angles. Temporal characteristics including strong side and weak side ski and pole phase times were also calculated. Cycle velocity and cycle length were found to be significantly related as were cycle velocity and the maximum strong side knee angle (r > .48, p < .05). Cycle velocity and the CM velocity vector angle were found to have only a moderate non-significant relationship as did cycle velocity and the strong and weak side ski angles. For those skiers using the open field skating technique, CM lateral motion (as measured by the CM velocity vector angle and the ski angles) did not seem to be a distinguishing factor between faster and slower skiers, as hypothesized. However, cycle length and the maximum strong side knee angle did seem to distinguish faster from slower skiers. Skiers who covered more distance throughout a cyde tended to have faster cycle velocities. Contributing to this increased distance could have been the thrust of the strong side ski. Skiers with the most strong side knee extension tended to ski the fastest. Thus, it seems that greater leg extension results in greater propulsive forces and greater velocity. / Graduation date: 1993

In multicultural cities such as Vancouver, high proportions of inner city residents and immigrants (including refugees, domestic care workers, and citizens for whom English is a foreign language) are, for various reasons, socially, economically, and politically excluded from the mainstream. In attempting to narrow the divide that separates those on the “outside” from those on the “inside” of society, the planning profession has become increasingly concerned with the idea of planning with, as opposed to for, marginalized individuals. This approach is most often referred to as “communitybased” or “empowerment” planning. This thesis explores the role conversational English as a Second Language (ESL) can play in the empowerment planning process by analyzing the “ESL Summer Pilot Project” as a case study. Collaboratively planned and implemented with residents of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) who patronize the UBC Learning Exchange, the story/ case study reveals how a total of DTES residents helped nearly 70 immigrants practice what they need to effectively integrate into society; that is a cultural understanding of the who, what, where, when, and most importantly, how questions relating to life in Canada, and the means to ask those questions- conversational English. The story also reveals how, by taking a leadership role, these DTES residents were able to increase their sense of self-confidence, self-esteem, and capacity to make a difference in their own lives and communities. After situating the ESL Summer Pilot Project story in the empowerment planning literature, I based my analysis on my own observations and on those of the nine “ESL facilitators” who participated in the focus groups I led after the pilot had concluded in the summer of 2004. What I found was that the empowerment planning process involves, more than anything, the development of mutually trusting, mindful, and caring “planner-participant” relationships and eventually, “participant-participant” relationships, that rely on the continued use of cross-cultural dialogue (or, in this case,conversational ESL) in order to link people’s knowledge and love to action.

In multicultural cities such as Vancouver, high proportions of inner city residents and immigrants (including refugees, domestic care workers, and citizens for whom English is a foreign language) are, for various reasons, socially, economically, and politically excluded from the mainstream. In attempting to narrow the divide that separates those on the “outside” from those on the “inside” of society, the planning profession has become increasingly concerned with the idea of planning with, as opposed to for, marginalized individuals. This approach is most often referred to as “communitybased” or “empowerment” planning. This thesis explores the role conversational English as a Second Language (ESL) can play in the empowerment planning process by analyzing the “ESL Summer Pilot Project” as a case study. Collaboratively planned and implemented with residents of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) who patronize the UBC Learning Exchange, the story/ case study reveals how a total of DTES residents helped nearly 70 immigrants practice what they need to effectively integrate into society; that is a cultural understanding of the who, what, where, when, and most importantly, how questions relating to life in Canada, and the means to ask those questions- conversational English. The story also reveals how, by taking a leadership role, these DTES residents were able to increase their sense of self-confidence, self-esteem, and capacity to make a difference in their own lives and communities. After situating the ESL Summer Pilot Project story in the empowerment planning literature, I based my analysis on my own observations and on those of the nine “ESL facilitators” who participated in the focus groups I led after the pilot had concluded in the summer of 2004. What I found was that the empowerment planning process involves, more than anything, the development of mutually trusting, mindful, and caring “planner-participant” relationships and eventually, “participant-participant” relationships, that rely on the continued use of cross-cultural dialogue (or, in this case,conversational ESL) in order to link people’s knowledge and love to action.

Neuroplasticity is a mechanism whereby the brain changes its configuration and function through experience. Short-term learning (i.e. minutes to hours) is associated with early phases of neuroplasticity whereby the cortical responses increase to common stimuli, and underlies long-term learning (i.e. days to weeks). Tactile sensation is an important sense, therefore if it became compromised it would be valuable to have an understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie tactile short-term learning, and other means to promote learning, such as the introduction of a second modality. Having more knowledge in the area of somatosensory learning could then provide the means leading to long-term learning and potential recovery of function after brain injury such as stroke. The focus of this thesis was to research the role of visual information on short-term somatosensory learning, and to understand the electrophysiological mechanisms that are associated with this modulation of learning within a single testing session. The methodology consisted of learning Morse code tactile patterns corresponding to English letters, and was broken up into two experiments. The objective of the first experiment was to determine the functional benefit to performance of the temporal and spatial coupling of tactile and visual stimuli, and the second experiment was used to determine the electrophysiological mechanisms associated with the modulation of somatosensory processing by visual stimulation. Given that there is a quantifiable measurement of learning, we hypothesized that tactile-visual cross-modal coupling will increase the learning outcome and provide functional benefit. It has been shown (Eimer et al., 2001) that presenting a visual stimulus within the same spatial site as the corresponding tactile stimulus will enhance the measurable components, and better the behavioural performance (Ohara et al., 2006). The current results demonstrated that visual-tactile cross-modal association can have a positive effect on learning over a short period of time, and that presenting a visual stimulus prior to a tactile stimulus may be beneficial to performance during the early stages of learning. Also, the results from the second experiment demonstrated an elevated and prolonged tactile P100, and a noticeably absent N140 component when tactile information was presented before visual information. Further research, extending from this thesis, is needed to advance understanding of the performance and electrophysiological outcomes of visual-tactile cross-modal associations. The findings of this study give insight into the performance and electrophysiological effects involved with short-term somatosensory learning, specifically how the manipulation of a visual stimulus, both spatially and temporally, can affect tactile learning as indicated through behavioural performance, and affect the electrophysiological mechanisms involved with somatosensory processing.

“Biosim” is a simulation software which works to simulate the harvesting system.This system is able to design a model for any logistic problem with the combination of several objects so that the artificial system can show the performance of an individual model. The system will also describe the efficiency, possibility to be chosen for real life application of that particular model. So, when any one wish to setup a logistic model like- harvesting system, in real life he/she may be noticed about the suitable prostitution for his plants and factories as well as he/she may get information about the least number of objects, total time to complete the task, total investment required for his model, total amount of noise produced for his establishment in advance. It will produce an advance over view for his model. But “Biosim” is quite slow .As it is an object based system, it takes long time to make its decision. Here the main task is to modify the system so that it can work faster than the previous. So, the main objective of this thesis is to reduce the load of “Biosim” by making some modification of the original system as well as to increase its efficiency. So that the whole system will be faster than the previous one and performs more efficiently when it will be applied in real life. Theconcept is to separate the execution part of ”Biosim” form its graphical engine and run this separated portion in a third generation language platform. C++ is chosenhere as this external platform. After completing the proposed system, results with different models have been observed. The results show that, for any type of plants of fields, for any number of trucks, the proposed system is faster than the original system. The proposed system takes at least 15% less time “Biosim”. The efficiency increase with the complexity of than the original the model. More complex the model, more efficient the proposed system is than original “Biosim”.Depending on the complexity of a model, the proposed system can be 56.53 % faster than the original “Biosim”.

Neuroplasticity is a mechanism whereby the brain changes its configuration and function through experience. Short-term learning (i.e. minutes to hours) is associated with early phases of neuroplasticity whereby the cortical responses increase to common stimuli, and underlies long-term learning (i.e. days to weeks). Tactile sensation is an important sense, therefore if it became compromised it would be valuable to have an understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie tactile short-term learning, and other means to promote learning, such as the introduction of a second modality. Having more knowledge in the area of somatosensory learning could then provide the means leading to long-term learning and potential recovery of function after brain injury such as stroke. The focus of this thesis was to research the role of visual information on short-term somatosensory learning, and to understand the electrophysiological mechanisms that are associated with this modulation of learning within a single testing session. The methodology consisted of learning Morse code tactile patterns corresponding to English letters, and was broken up into two experiments. The objective of the first experiment was to determine the functional benefit to performance of the temporal and spatial coupling of tactile and visual stimuli, and the second experiment was used to determine the electrophysiological mechanisms associated with the modulation of somatosensory processing by visual stimulation. Given that there is a quantifiable measurement of learning, we hypothesized that tactile-visual cross-modal coupling will increase the learning outcome and provide functional benefit. It has been shown (Eimer et al., 2001) that presenting a visual stimulus within the same spatial site as the corresponding tactile stimulus will enhance the measurable components, and better the behavioural performance (Ohara et al., 2006). The current results demonstrated that visual-tactile cross-modal association can have a positive effect on learning over a short period of time, and that presenting a visual stimulus prior to a tactile stimulus may be beneficial to performance during the early stages of learning. Also, the results from the second experiment demonstrated an elevated and prolonged tactile P100, and a noticeably absent N140 component when tactile information was presented before visual information. Further research, extending from this thesis, is needed to advance understanding of the performance and electrophysiological outcomes of visual-tactile cross-modal associations. The findings of this study give insight into the performance and electrophysiological effects involved with short-term somatosensory learning, specifically how the manipulation of a visual stimulus, both spatially and temporally, can affect tactile learning as indicated through behavioural performance, and affect the electrophysiological mechanisms involved with somatosensory processing.

A new definition of the diffusion coefficient for use in reactor physics calculations is evaluated in this thesis. It is based on naturally flux-limited diffusion theory (FDT), sometimes referred to as Levermore-Pomraning diffusion theory. Another diffusion coefficient more loosely based on FDT is also evaluated in this thesis. Flux-limited diffusion theory adheres to the physical principle of flux-limiting, which is that the magnitude of neutron current is not allowed to exceed the scalar flux. Because the diffusion coefficients currently used in the nuclear industry are not flux-limited they may violate this principle in regions of large spatial gradients, and because they encompass other assumptions, they are only accurate when used in the types of calculations for which they were intended. The evaluations were performed using fine-mesh diffusion theory. They are in one spatial dimension and in 47, 4, and 2 energy groups, and were compared against a transport theory benchmark using equivalent energy structures and spatial discretization. The results show that the flux-limited diffusion coefficient (FD) outperforms the standard diffusion coefficient in calculations of single assemblies with vacuum boundaries, according to flux- and eigenvalue-errors. In single assemblies with reflective boundary conditions, the FD yielded smaller improvements, and tended to improve only the fast-group results. The results also computationally confirm that the FD adheres to flux-limiting, while the standard diffusion coefficient does not.

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