Healthy aging is associated with a reduction in slow-wave sleep (SWS), crucial for declarative memory consolidation in young adults; consequently, previously observed benefits of sleep on declarative learning in older adults could reflect a passive role of sleep in protecting memories from waking interference, rather than an active, stabilizing effect. To dissociate the passive and active roles of sleep, a visuo-spatial task was administered; memory was probed after a 12 hr interval consisting of either daytime wake or overnight sleep and post-wake/post-sleep stability of the memories was tested following task-related interference. Ninety five older adults (mean=65.43 yrs; SD=7.6 yrs) and 137 young adults (mean= 21.22yrs; SD=2.62 yrs) were tested across either an “Interference” or a “No Interference” condition (without exposure to the interference). In both young and older adults, sleep significantly benefitted performance compared to wake, such that the memories were more resistant to subsequent interference. For young adults, post-sleep performance was correlated with time spent in SWS and delta power density during SWS early in the night. Additionally, the interaction between NREM and REM early in the night played an important role in stabilizing the memories. There were no significant correlations between sleep parameters and over-sleep performance changes in older adults; however, high performing older adults benefitted from greater amounts of REM sleep early in the night, and from the interaction between NREM and REM during this time period. These results suggest that the active role of sleep in declarative memory consolidation persists in an aging population.

Thanks to different multimedia authoring tools and specialized software that facilitate the design and development of computer-based simulations, science teachers and instructional media designers have a variety of simulations to support instructional delivery. However, there is a lack of research on how instructional designers and science teachers can select, design, and implement science simulations most effectively based on the simulations' visual attributes. One of the design principles that play an important part in the simulation design process is the visual representation of on-screen objects used to describe science concepts or principles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of abstract and concrete visual representation of electricity concepts and principles in an instructional simulation on students' declarative knowledge, learning transfer, and perceptions of the simulation. The participants in this study were 39 elementary education pre-service teachers who were randomly assigned to either the concrete or the abstract treatment. The educational intervention was conducted over three 100-minute sessions. Since the sample violated the normality assumption, Mann-Whitney tests were conducted to verify whether the independent variable had significant effects on the three dependent variables. The data analysis found no statistically significant difference on learners' declarative knowledge, learning transfer, and perceptions about the simulation's attributes between those assigned to the concrete treatment and those assigned to the abstract treatment (p>.05). This finding did not favor one type of visual representation over the other.

The parameter setting problem is part of a complex, automated process for customizing Scania's products; primarily trucks and buses. The problem is modelled as a stateless, acyclic graph of pure functions and variables. A subset of a deterministic, concurrent, demand-driven, declarative programming model is implemented under the Microsoft .NET framework. The implementation is evaluated based on suitability for solving the parameter setting problem, computational performance and general applicability within the organization. It is concluded that the model reduces the complexity of the parameter setting problem, mainly due to demand-driven (lazy) execution. The implementation scales as expected on sequential programs in time and memory with respect to input size. Parallel programs benefit partly from parallelism but bottlenecks in the .NET framework seem to limit the speedup. The general applicability of the programming model within the organization is potentially high and there are many extensions that can be added in the future, such as constraint programming. / Parametersättning är en del av en komplex, automatiserad process för att specialanpassa Scanias produkter – primärt lastbilar och bussar. Problemet är modellerat som en tillståndslös acyklisk graf av rena funktioner och variabler. En deterministisk, parallel, behovstyrd deklarativ programmeringsmodell har implementeras under Microsoft .NET-ramverket. Implementationen utvärderas utifrån lämplighet för parametersättning, prestanda och generell nytta inom organisationen. Modellen lyckas med att reducera komplexiteten för parametersättning, primärt tack vare behovstyrd (lat) exekvering. Implementationen skalar i både tid och minne i enlighet med förväntningarna för sekventiella program. Parallella program har delvis nytta av multipla processorkärnor men flaskhalsar i .NET-ramverket verkar begränsa prestandan. Programmeringsmodellens generella nytta inom organisationen är potentiellt hög och det finns många tillbyggnader som kan läggas till i framtiden, såsom villkorsprogrammering.

In recent years, metadata-driven software development has gained prominence. In this implementation model, various application concerns are provided as third-party frameworks and libraries that the programmer configures through metadata, such as XML configuration files or Java annotations. Metadata-driven software development is a special case of declarative programming: metadata serves as a domain-specific language that the programmer uses to declare various concerns, whose implementation is provided by an elaborate ecosystem of libraries and frameworks that serve as pre-defined application building blocks. Examples abound: transparent persistence mechanisms facilitate data management; security frameworks provide access control and encryption; unit testing frameworks provide abstractions for implementing and executing unit tests, etc. Metadata-driven software development has been particularly embraced in enterprise computing as a means of providing standardized solutions to common application scenarios. Despite the conciseness and simplicity benefits of metadata-driven software development, this implementation model introduces a unique set of reuse and evolution challenges. In particular, metadata is not reusable across application modules, and program evolution causes unsafe discrepancies between the main source code and its corresponding metadata. The research described in this dissertation addresses five fundamental problems of metadata-driven software development: (1) bytecode enhancements that transparently introduce concerns hinder program understanding and debugging; (2) mainstream enterprise metadata formats are hard to understand, evolve, and reuse; (3) concerns declared via metadata cannot be reused when source-to-source compiling emerging languages to mainstream ones; (4) metadata correctness cannot be automatically ensured as application source code is being refactored and enhanced; and (5) lacking built-in metadata, JavaScript programs can be enhanced with additional concerns only through manual source code changes. The research described in this dissertation leverages domain-specific languages and automated code generation to enable effective reuse and safe evolution in metadata-driven software development. The specific innovations that address the problems outlined above are as follows: (1) a domain-specific language (DSL) describing bytecode enhancement that facilitates the understanding and debugging of additional concerns; (2) a novel metadata format expressed as a DSL that is easier to author, understand, reuse, and maintain than existing metadata formats; (3) automated metadata translation that enables effective reuse of target language additional concerns from source-to-source compiled source language programs; (4) metadata invariants---a new abstraction for expressing and verifying metadata coding convention; and (5) a new approach to declaratively enhancing JavaScript programs with additional concerns. / Ph. D.

Resource management is a critical part in high-performance computing software. While management of processing resources to increase performance is the most critical, efficient management of memory resources plays an important role in solving large problems. This thesis research seeks to create an effective dynamic memory management scheme for a declarative data-parallel programming system. In such systems, some sort of automatic resource management is a requirement. Using the Loci framework, this thesis research focuses on exploring such opportunities. We believe there exists an automatic memory management scheme for such declarative data-parallel systems that provides good compromise between memory utilization and performance. In addition to basic memory management, this thesis research also seeks to develop methods that take advantages of the cache memory subsystem and explore balances between memory utilization and parallel communication costs in such declarative data-parallel frameworks.

Developmental dyslexia is a specific reading and spelling disability with several explanatory proposals. Previous research has shown that there is a strong relation between developmental dyslexia and difficulties in phonological processing, which has resulted in the theory that the cause of developmental dyslexia is a specific weakness in phonological awareness. However, such a specific weakness does not explain the non-linguistic difficulties that are also common in developmental dyslexia. According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), several (both linguistic and non-linguistic) difficulties that are observed in developmental dyslexia can be explained by abnormal development of the procedural memory system. Moreover, this hypothesis implies that the declarative memory system remains intact and may have a compensatory role for the reading disabilities in developmental dyslexia. In this study, the aspect of declarative memory that is visual recognition memory after incidental encoding was examined. 10 children with diagnosed developmental dyslexia and 10 typically developed children participated in the study. The results indicated an intact declarative memory in children with developmental dyslexia. However, no significant correlation between declarative memory and reading ability was found. Thus, the prediction that declarative memory can serve a compensatory role in developmental dyslexia was not supported. / Dyslexi är en specifik läs- och skrivsvårighet med flera förklaringsmodeller. Tidigare forskning har visat på ett starkt samband mellan dyslexi och svårigheter med fonologiskt processande, vilket har lett fram till hypotesen att orsaken till dyslexi är en specifik svaghet i fonologisk medvetenhet. En sådan specifik nedsättning kan dock inte förklara de icke-språkliga svårigheter som också är vanligt förekommande vid dyslexi. Enligt the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) kan många (både språkliga och icke-språkliga) svårigheter vid dyslexi förklaras av en nedsättning i det procedurella minnet. Vidare innebär hypotesen att det deklarativa minnet är intakt och kan fungera som kompensation för svårigheterna vid dyslexi. I denna studie undersöktes det deklarativa minnet i form av visuellt igenkänningsminne efter oavsiktlig inkodning. I studien deltog 10 barn med dyslexi och 10 barn utan dyslexi. Resultatet indikerade att det deklarativa minnet var intakt hos barnen med dyslexi. Däremot kunde inget signifikant samband mellan deklarativt minne och läsförmåga ses. Antagandet att deklarativt minne kan fungera som kompensation vid dyslexi kunde därför inte stödjas.

Utifrån the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) antas det deklarativa minnet vara intakt hos personer med dyslexi. Detta styrks av studier som visat att deklarativt minne är intakt eller förstärkt hos barn med SLI eller dyslexi då det undersökts med icke-språkliga minnestest. Personer med dyslexi som genomgår universitetsstudier antas kompensera för sina svårigheter på olika sätt, bland annat med det deklarativa minnet. I denna studie har deklarativt minne undersökts i form av visuellt igenkänningsminne efter oavsiktlig inkodning. Deltagarna utgjordes av 11 universitetsstuderande med dyslexi samt en kontrollgrupp på 26 universitetsstuderande utan dyslexi. Resultatet indikerade ett intakt deklarativt minne hos personer med dyslexi. En trend till att de även har ett förstärkt minne efter 24 timmar jämfört med kontrollgruppen kunde skönjas men var inte signifikant. Prediktionen att deklarativt minne används som kompensation i allmänhet samt för nedsatt läsförmåga kunde inte styrkas. Andra möjliga kompensatoriska strategier och förmågor än deklarativt minne diskuteras. / Based on the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) declarative memory is assumed to be intact in people with dyslexia. This is supported by studies showing that declarative memory is intact or enhanced in children with SLI or dyslexia when examined using non-verbal memory tests. People with dyslexia who undergo university studies are assumed to compensate for their difficulties in different ways, including with the use of declarative memory. This study examines the aspect of declarative memory that is visual recognition memory after incidental encoding. The participants were 11 university students with dyslexia and a control group of 26 university students without dyslexia. The results showed an intact declarative memory in people with dyslexia. A possible trend that they also have an enhanced memory after 24 hours compared with the control group could be seen but was not significant. The prediction that declarative memory is used as compensation in general and for impaired reading skills could not be substantiated. Other possible compensatory strategies and abilities besides declarative memory are discussed.

<pre>The proliferation of digital data, driven by factors like social media, e-commerce, etc., has created an increasing demand for highly processed data at higher levels of fidelity, which puts increasing demands on modern data processing systems. In the past, data processing systems faced bottlenecks due to limited main memory availability. However, as main memory becomes more abundant, their optimization focus has shifted from disk I/O to optimized computation through techniques like compilation. This dissertation addresses several critical limitations within such compilation-based data processing systems.<br><br>In modern data analytics pipelines, combination of workloads from various paradigms, such as traditional DBMS and Machine Learning, is common. <br>These pipelines are typically managed by specialized systems designed for specific workload types. While these specialized systems optimize their individual performance, substantial performance loss occurs when they are combined to handle mixed workloads. This loss is mainly due to overheads at system boundaries, including data copying and format conversions, as well as the general inability to perform cross-system optimizations.<br><br>This dissertation tackles this problem in two angles. First, it proposes an efficient post-hoc integration of individual systems using generative programming via the construction of common intermediate layers. This approach preserves the best-of-breed performance of individual workloads while achieving state-of-the-art performance for combined workloads. Second, we introduce a high-level query language capable of expressing various workload types, acting as a general substrate to implement combined workloads. This allows the generation of optimized code for end-to-end workloads through<br>the construction of an intermediate representation (IR).<br><br>The dissertation then shifts focus to data processing systems used for incremental view maintenance (IVM). While existing IVM systems achieve high performance through compilation and novel algorithms, they have limitations in handling specific query classes. Notably, they are incapable of handling queries involving correlated nested aggregate subqueries. To address this, our work proposes a novel indexing scheme based on a new data structure and a corresponding set of algorithms that fully incrementalize such queries. This approach result in substantial asymptotic speedups and order-of-magnitude performance improvements for workloads of practical importance.<br><br>Finally, the dissertation explores efficient and expressive fixed-point computations, with a focus on Datalog--a language widely used for declarative program analysis. Although existing Datalog engines rely on compilation and specialized code generation to achieve performance, they lack the flexibility to support extensions required for complex program analysis. Our work introduces a new Datalog engine built using generative programming techniques that offers both flexibility and state-of-the-art performance through specialized code generation.</pre><p></p>

No description available.

Thesis (PhD (Sport Science))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a 16-week multidimensional intervention programme on the speed and accuracy of decision making, declarative knowledge and visual skills of u/20 rugby players. Two intact groups of rugby academy players participated in this study. One academy group participated in the intervention programme, which included activities, including the statistical analysis of individual players, game analysis, tactical rugby discussions, rugby rule discussions and visual skills training. The other academy group served as the comparison group and completed both the pre- and post-tests. The results indicated significant improvements in the speed of tactical decision making by participants in both the experimental and the comparison groups. Both groups also indicated a significant deterioration in the accuracy of their decisions. Both groups achieved a significant improvement in their declarative knowledge of rugby rules, as well as in their visual skills. The similarity in the post-test scores of the two groups led to the conclusion that the intervention programme, as presented in this study, did not appear to make a significant impact on the players. Suggestions are made for the design of future intervention programmes to improve tactical decision making.