In diesem Beitrag wird das Korridorverfahren im vertikalen Finanzausgleich der Länder hinsichtlich seiner impliziten Eigenschaften analysiert. Ausgegangen wird hierbei von einer asymmetrischen Informationsstruktur, bei der die Kosten der Bereitstellung lokaler öffentlicher Güter nicht allgemein bekannt sind, ebenso wenig wie deren Umfang, Qualität und Struktur. Zwar setzt das Korridorverfahren die Kenntnis dieser Informationen seitens des Landes nicht voraus, es kann jedoch gezeigt werden, dass dieser vermeintliche Vorteil stets mit einer Reduktion des Erwartungswerts der Korridorverteilung unter das statistische Mittel der realen kommunalen Budgetdefizite erkauft wird, was auch für den Vergleich der entsprechenden Wachstumsraten gilt. Dazu nehmen wir eine Formalisierung des Korridorverfahrens vor, das in der Folge als generalisierte Verteilung einer transformierten Zufallsvariable interpretiert und in spezifische Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungen implementiert wird, was wiederum die exakte Bestimmung seiner charakteristischen Maße erlaubt. Als eine wesentliche Implikation der deduzierten Resultate ist zu konstatieren, dass das Korridorverfahren entgegen der Intention als Maß zur Bestimmung „der angemessenen Finanzausstattung“ der Kommunen im vertikalen Finanzausgleich nicht geeignet ist und die kommunale Aufgabenerfüllung in dynamischer Sicht in Frage steht.

This qualitative case study explored four early childhood preservice teachers’ experiences and reflections pertaining to a required critical multicultural teacher education course and sought to understand how they navigated student teaching the following academic year. Inquiring into teaching and learning in a critical multicultural education course and seeking to examine possible connections between the course and subsequent enactments of pedagogical practices in student teaching, this study was guided by the questions: How did preservice teachers construct their experiences in a multicultural education course? How did preservice teachers who had previously taken a multicultural education course make sense of and navigate their student teaching experiences? The dataset was comprised of three in-depth individual interviews with four early childhood preservice teachers—two White preservice teachers and two preservice teachers of color; field notes from observations of each preservice teacher’s student teaching placement; three individual assignments written in the multicultural education course; and reflective journals and lesson plans submitted during student teaching. These data were analyzed through a critical pedagogy lens via axial coding. Findings demonstrated that the required multicultural education course influenced preservice teachers in different ways, conveying the complexity of learning to teach and the intertwined nature of personal and professional identities. Preservice teachers’ experiences in the multicultural education course were deeply informed by their identities, dis/privileges, and representation in the course (in readings, videos of teaching practices, and the identity of the teacher educator). Preservice teachers’ navigations of student teaching in the following academic year were complex, being informed by a variety of factors, including their racial identity development, their life experiences and prior knowledge about race and difference, the racial identity of their mentor teacher in relation to theirs, and the demographics of their placements. Findings complicate simplistic notions of teaching and learning within the context of initial teacher education, pointing toward the need to recognize and account for the deeply entwined nature of racial identity development and the development of teachers committed to fostering equity and justice. Implications point toward needed transformations in early childhood teacher education.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Education in the Department of Educational Planning and Administration at the University of Zululand, 2000. / This study investigated the management of gender conflict among high school learners. The researcher has identified the types of gender conflict that are perceived to be more serious and the frequencies of different types of gender conflict. The researcher has also determined the ways of managing gender conflict in the high school and established alternative approaches of managing it. Finally, the research recommends possible initiatives on the part of the management staff, educators, learners, governing body and parents, as well as the community at large to promote gender equity * and peaceful coexistence in schools.

L’objectif de cette thèse est l’étude de récepteurs MIMO LDPC itératifs. Les techniques MIMO permettent d’augmenter la capacité des réseaux sans fil sans la nécessité de ressources fréquentielles additives. Associées aux schémas de modulations multiporteuses CP-OFDM, les techniques MIMO sont ainsi devenues la pierre angulaire pour les systèmes sans fil à haute efficacité spectrale. La réception optimale peut être obtenue à l’aide d’une réception conjointe (Egalisation/Décodage). Étant très complexe, la réception conjointe n’est pas envisagée et l’égalisation et le décodage sont réalisés disjointement au coût d’une dégradation significative en performances. Entre ces deux solutions, la réception itérative trouve son intérêt pour sa capacité à s’approcher des performances optimales avec une complexité réduite. La conception de récepteurs itératifs pour certaines applications, de type WiFi à titre d’exemple doit respecter la structure du code imposée par la norme. Ces codes ne sont pas optimisés pour des récepteurs itératifs. En observant l’effet du nombre d' itérations dans le processus itératif, on montre par simulation que l’ordonnancement des itérations décodage LDPC/Turbo-égalisation joue un rôle important dans la complexité et le délai du récepteur. Nous proposons de définir des ordonnancements permettant de réduire la complexité globale du récepteur. Deux approches sont proposées, une approche statique ainsi qu'une autre dynamique. Ensuite nous considérons un système multi-utilisateur avec un accès multiple par répartition spatiale. Nous étudions l’intérêt de la réception itérative dans ce contexte tenant en compte la différence de puissance signale utile/interférence. / The aim of this thesis is to address the design of iterative MIMO receivers using LDPC Error Correcting codes. MIMO techniques enable capacity increase in wireless networks with no additional frequency ressources. The associationof MIMO with multicarrier modulation techniques OFDM made them the cornerstone of emerging high rate wireless networks. Optimal reception can be achieved using joint detection and decoding at the expense of a huge complexity making it impractical. Disjoint reception is then the most used. The design of iterative receivers for some applications using LDPC codes like Wifi (IEEE 802.11n) is constrained by the standard code structure which is not optimized for such kind of receivers. By observing the effect of the number of iterations on performance and complexity we underline the interest of scheduling LDPC decoding iterations and turboequalization iterations. We propose to define schedules for the iterative receiver in order to reduce its complexity while preserving its performance. Two approaches are used : static and dynamic scheduling. The second part of this work is concerns Multiuser MIMO using Spatial Division Multiple Access. We explore and evaluate the interest of using iterative reception to cancel residual inter-user interference.

Fixed wireless communication is a cost-efficient solution for flexible and rapid front-/backhaul deployments. Technologies including dual polarization, carrier aggregation, and higher order modulation schemes have been developed for enhancing its throughput. In order to better support the massive traffic increment during network evolution, novel wireless backhaul solutions with possible new dimensions in increasing the spectral efficiency are needed. Line-of-Sight (LoS) Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication is such a promising candidate allowing the throughput to scale linearly with the deployed antenna pairs. Spatial multiplexing with sub-channels having approximately equal quality exists within a single LoS direction. In addition, operating at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies or higher, the abundantly available bandwidth can further enhance the throughput of LoS MIMO communication. The mmWave LoS MIMO communication in this work exploits the spatial multiplexing from the structured phase couplings of a single path direction, while most of the state-of-the-art works in mmWave communication focus on the spatial multiplexing from the spatial signature of multiple path directions. Challenges: The performance of a LoS MIMO system is highly dependent on the antenna topology. Topologies resulting in theoretically orthogonal channels are considered as optimal arrangements. The general topology solution from a unified viewpoint is unknown. The known optimal arrangements in the literature are rather independently derived and contain restrictions on their array planes. Moreover, operating at mmWave frequencies with wideband signals introduces additional challenges. On one hand, high pathloss is one limiting factor of the received signal power. On the other hand, high symbol rates and relatively high antenna numbers create challenges in signal processing, especially the required complexity for compensating hardware imperfections and applying beamforming. Targets: In this thesis, we focus on antenna topologies and signal processing schemes to effectively handle the complexity challenge in LoS MIMO communications. Considering the antenna topology, we target a general solution of optimal arrangements on any arbitrarily curved surface. Moreover, we study the antenna topologies with which the system gains more streams and better received signals. Considering the signal processing, we look for low complexity schemes that can effectively compensate the hardware impairments and can cope with a large number of antennas. Main Contributions: The following models and algorithms are developed for understanding mmWave LoS spatial multiplexing and turning it into practice. First, after analyzing the relation between the phase couplings and the antenna positions in three dimensional space, we derive a channel factorization model for LoS MIMO communication. Based on this, we provide a general topology solution from a projection point of view and show that the resulting spatial multiplexing is robust against moderate displacement errors. In addition, we propose a multi-subarray LoS MIMO system for jointly harvesting the spatial multiplexing and array gains. Then, we propose a novel algorithm for LoS MIMO channel equalization, which is carried out in the reverse order w.r.t. the channel factorization model. The number of multiplications in both digital and analog implementations of the proposed solution is found to increase approximately linearly w.r.t. the number of antennas. The proposed algorithm thus potentially reduces complexity for equalizing the channel during the system expansion with more streams. After this, we focus on algorithms that can effectively estimate and compensate the hardware impairments. A systolic/pipelined processing architecture is proposed in this work to achieve a balance between computational complexity and performance. The proposed architecture is a viable approach that scales well with the number of MIMO streams. With the recorded data from a hardware-in-the-loop demonstrator, it is shown that the proposed algorithms can provide reliable signal estimates at a relatively low complexity level. Finally, a channel model is derived for mmWave systems with multiple widely spaced subarrays and multiple paths. The spatial multiplexing gain from the spatial signature of multiple path directions and the spatial multiplexing gain from the structured phase couplings of a single path direction are found simultaneously at two different levels of the antenna arrangements. Attempting to exploit them jointly, we propose to use an advanced hybrid analog/digital beamforming architecture to efficiently process the signals at reasonable costs and complexity. The proposed system can overcome the low rank property caused by the limited number of propagation paths.

This dissertation material provided in this work details the techniques that are developed to aid in the Classification of tumors, non-tumors, and dense masses in a Mammogram, certain characteristics such as texture in a mammographic image are used to identify the regions of interest as a part of classification. Pattern recognizing techniques such as nearest mean classifier and Support vector machine classifier are also used to classify the features. The initial stages include the processing of mammographic image to extract the relevant features that would be necessary for classification and during the final stage the features are classified using the pattern recognizing techniques mentioned above. The goal of this research work is to provide the Medical Experts and Researchers an effective method which would aid them in identifying the tumors, non-tumors, and dense masses in a mammogram. At first the breast region extraction is carried using the entire mammogram. The extraction is carried out by creating the masks and using those masks to extract the region of interest pertaining to the tumor. A chain code is employed to extract the various regions, the extracted regions could potentially be classified as tumors, non-tumors, and dense regions. Adaptive histogram equalization technique is employed to enhance the contrast of an image. After applying the adaptive histogram equalization for several times which will provide a saturated image which would contain only bright spots of the mammographic image which appear like dense regions of the mammogram. These dense masses could be potential tumors which would need treatment. Relevant Characteristics such as texture in the mammographic image are used for feature extraction by using the nearest mean and support vector machine classifier. A total of thirteen Haralick features are used to classify the three classes. Support vector machine classifier is used to classify two class problems and radial basis function (RBF) kernel is used to find the best possible (c and gamma) values. Results obtained in this research suggest the best classification accuracy was achieved by using the support vector machines for both Tumor vs Non-Tumor and Tumor vs Dense masses. The maximum accuracies achieved for the tumor and non-tumor is above 90 % and for the dense masses is 70.8% using 11 features for support vector machines. Support vector machines performed better than the nearest mean majority classifier in the classification of the classes. Various case studies were performed using two distinct datasets in which each dataset consisting of 24 patients’ data in two individual views. Each patient data will consist of both the cranio caudal view and medio lateral oblique views. From these views the region of interest which could possibly be a tumor, non-tumor, or a dense regions(mass).

The past 45 years have witnessed unprecedented growth in social and economic inequality in the U.S. Much has been studied regarding the economic, sociological, and educational conditions that have led to increasing inequality, but it has mainly focused on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Recently there has been an increase in research on elites, but one area that has remained relatively understudied is the private, independent school industry. Since the Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s, most of the 1,600 independent schools in the U.S. have attempted to become accessible to more students, mainly by admitting growing numbers of students of color. However, over the last 20 years financial aid relative to school revenue has remained essentially flat, suggesting that “diversity” in independent schools has taken on a particular meaning. This study traces the history of “diversity” and interrogates why “diversity” is a problem worth addressing, how it has been conceived at different times, and what doing so has accomplished for independent schools. Previous literature has relied on Marxist and Bourdieusian structuralist theories to describe the mechanisms of social reproduction in elite schools. Instead, this study employs a Foucauldian framework and discourse analysis to examine the primary industry journal, Independent School, to construct a genealogy of “diversity” discourse since 1976. This approach endeavors to broaden the theoretical perspectives of elite research and reconceptualize independent schools’ role in perpetuating inequities in the U.S. The study finds six distinctive eras of “diversity” discourse within these 45 years, each with its own “diverse” subjectivities. “Diversity” has functioned in two primary modes corresponding to different regimes of truth. The first that spans 1976 to 1998 appreciates “diversity” as a matter of threat that must first be neutralized and then can be harnessed for the benefits of elites. In the second period (1999 to 2021) “diversity” transitions to a series of actions and skills that elites can equip themselves with to better their chances of success in their futures as societal leaders. The implications extend from there that by producing conceptions of “diversity” like these, particularly as matters of race, sexual orientation, and gender, (and not socioeconomic status) the institutional apparatus maintains a moral façade and obscures the role it plays in maintaining social stratification in the U.S.

The influent to a water and resource recovery facility (WRRF) generally exhibits significant diurnal variations in flow rate and load concentration. This makes determining the operating parameters and subsequently the overall operation of plants difficult, especially in developing countries due to the lack of highly skilled operators. Hence, there is an incentive for the control and operation of WRRFs in developing countries to be improved. Flow equalization tanks were identified as a potential method to attenuate the diurnal variations in flow rate and load concentration into plants. The main aim of this research was to develop a viable dynamic simulation model for the operation of flow equalization tanks, within a plant-wide framework (to allow for the evaluation of design and control strategies). The next aim was to determine the benefits of equalization tanks towards design and optimised operation of future WRRFs via scenario analyses. Finally, the effects of the equalization tank on the performance of various unit processes in a WRRF were to be investigated. The model was developed in three steps; i) the development of the required equations to model equalization tanks, ii) mass balance throughout the model for internal consistency and iii) scenario analyses to determine if the model generated reasonable and scientifically sound outputs. The model was developed using Microsoft Excel Visual Basic (VBA) and WEST®. Two scenarios were considered to assess the equalization tank modelled. Scenario One involved the comparison of the capital cost, unit process sizes and total footprint of a balanced sludge age Modified Ludzack-Ettinger (MLE) system with and without an equalization tank. Scenario Two compared the plant performance of the MLE system designed in Scenario One with and without a flow equalization tank. A dynamic simulation model replicating equalization tanks was successfully developed. From scenario analyses, it was determined that using an MLE system and only considering equalization of flow, there was a reduction in the size of several unit processes by 8-9% (primary settling tank, biological reactors, secondary settling tank, flotation unit, anoxic-aerobic digester), due to the less conservative design values that could be used as the variations of the influent were decreased. Despite this, a 13% overall increase in the footprint of the WRRF was observed due to the addition of the equalization tank. The attenuation of diurnal flow variations also resulted in reduction of various plant parameters by up to 50% (flow, OUR, VSS flux). Finally, there was a 10% improvement in the performance of various unit processes due to the presence of the equalization tank. In conclusion, the inclusion of equalization tanks in WRRFs has significant positive effects. These results were obtained with equalization of flow only. Some other limitations were experienced during the project resulting in the following recommendations: further research will be needed to validate and calibrate the model, As the model was not successfully incorporated in a plant-wide framework, further developments in that direction are required, as well as including the equalization of load in the model.

No description available.

This dissertation presents methods for modeling and mitigating voltage noise and timing jitter across high-speed chip-to-chip interconnects. Channel equalization and associated tuning schemes have been developed to target the distinct characteristics and signal degradation exhibited in the clock and data signals of multi-Gigabit/second digital communication links. Multiple methods for generating realistically degraded signals for the purpose of simulation are also presented and used to verify the proposed equalization and filtering topologies. Specifically, a new technique for modeling high-speed jittery clocks in the frequency domain is presented and shown to reduce transient simulation time and memory requirements, while simultaneously improving the timing resolution and accuracy of the simulation by minimizing the dependence on the transient simulation time-step. The technique is further developed to provide unprecedented control over the timing characteristics of the generated signals, and is then extended to the generation of random data signals with definable jitter statistics. Through these techniques,realistic clock and data waveforms are constructible, providing for the visualization of the combined effects of voltage and timing degradation, while at the same time tracking the phase relationship between the clock and data signals as they pass across their respective channels and through the receiving circuitry of the communication link. New methods for the automated tuning of second-order continuous-time channel equalizers are proposed based on the simulated or measured single pulse and double pulse responses of the transmission channel. Using only one degree of freedom, the methods target the reduction of inter-symbol interference (ISI) as identified in the single and double pulses. Through tuning either the circuit quality factor (Q), the peaking frequency, or the frequency zero, the methods are shown to adapt to a variety of channel lengths and datarates from the same original equalizer transfer function, implying a good degree of generality, while offering a simple, yet effective, method for ISI reduction. Finally, the design of an active 5 Gigahertz (GHz) bandpass filter, employed for high-speed clock conditioning, is presented and shown to address both random and deterministic components of the clock signal degradation. The bandpass transfer function is achieved through a combination of AC coupling and a resonant LC tank consisting of on-chip interleaved spiral inductors and a tunable capacitor array. Through adjusting the load capacitance in parallel with the inductors, the center frequency of the filter is tunable over a range of nearly 5GHz. The design targets a supply voltage of 1.2 volts and draws approximately 5.7 milliamps of current.