The high cost of fabricating VLSI circuits requires that they be validated, that is, shown to function correctly, before manufacture. The cost of design errors can be kept to a minimum if such validation occurs as early as possible; this is achieved by integrating validation into a hierarchical design procedure. In this thesis, a hierarchical approach to design, in which validation is performed between each pair of adjacent levels in the hierarchy, is developed. In order to adopt such an approach, a language is required for the formal description of hardware behaviour and structure. Therefore an important aspect of the development of the methodology, and a major theme of the thesis, is the development of languages to support the methodology. An enhanced version of CIRCAL, which enables large and abstract devices to be described concisely and supports formal reasoning about the behaviour of constructed systems, is presented. Specifications should accurately model the behaviour of real hardware and should be useful for design and validation; they should also be easy to write. In order to realise these goals, a number of specification techniques have been developed and a new language which enforces some of these techniques, thereby easing the specification task, is proposed. Ways in which a language may assist design have been investigated. Language constructs which restrict a designer, thereby removing some design decisions, have been developed. A simple correctness-preserving transformation is presented, illustrating another way in which a designer may be assisted by a formal language. Specification techniques play an important part in the validation task, as accurate and consistent modelling is vital in establishing the correctness of implementations. Techniques have also been developed which enable detailed implementations to be usefully compared with more abstract specifications. This is demonstrated in a large example, the specification, design and formal verification of a simple microprocessor. Finally, the concept of contextual constraints, restrictions on the environment in which a device may be placed, is introduced. A method of specifying such constraints has been developed, and it is shown that their formal treatment can provide assistance in specification, design and verification.

This dissertation presents techniques to achieve predictable execution of coarse-grained software components and for preservation of temporal properties of components during their integration and reuse. The dissertation presents a novel concept runnable virtual node (RVN) which interaction with the environment is bounded both by a functional and a temporal interface, and the validity of its internal temporal behaviour is preserved when integrated with other components or when reused in a new environment. The realization of RVN exploits techniques for hierarchical scheduling to achieve temporal isolation, and the principles from component-based software-engineering to achieve functional isolation. The proof-of-concept case studies executed on a micro-controller demonstrate the preserving of real-time properties within software components for predictable integration and reusability in a new environment, in both hierarchical scheduling and RVN contexts. Further, a multi-resource server (MRS) is proposed and implemented to enable predictable execution when composing multiple real-time components on a COTS multicore platform. MRS uses resource reservation for both CPU-bandwidth and memory-bus bandwidth to bound the interferences between tasks running on the same core, as well as, between tasks running on different cores. The later could, without MRS, interfere with each other due to contention on a shared memory-bus and memory. The results indicated that MRS can be used to "encapsulate" legacy systems and to give them enough resources to fulfill their purpose. In the dissertation, the compositional schedulability analysis for MRS is also provided and an experimental study is performed to bring insight on the correlation between the server budgets. We believe that the proposed approaches enable a faster software integration and support legacy reuse and that this work transcend the boundaries of software engineering and real-time systems. / PPMSched / PROGRESS

Neighbourhood stressors have an incubating effect for a variety of health-related disorders involving children. It is of interest is to determine if asthma prevalence is greater amongst school children at age 7-8 resident of chronic stress neighbourhoods in Winnipeg, after adjusting for family history of asthma and socioeconomic status. The urban component of children (1472 entire; 698 birth home) extracted from the Study of Asthma, Genes and the Environment (SAGE) Survey administered in 2002-2003 to a birth cohort from 1995 in Manitoba. Dichotomous parent report of child asthma from the SAGE Survey nested within birth cohort was geocoded by postal code, which allowed designation of neighbourhood in hierarchical linear modelling. Children living in census tracts assigned low SES scores by compositional stressors were found to have a decreased odds of parent report of asthma, while those inhabiting profiles with high contextual crime rates were at increased risk.

Hierarchical task decompositions play an essential role in the design of complex simulation and decision systems, such as the ones that arise in video games. Game designers find it very natural to adopt a divide-and-conquer philosophy of specifying hierarchical policies, where decision modules can be constructed somewhat independently. The process of choosing the parameters of these modules manually is typically lengthy and tedious. The hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) field has produced elegant ways of decomposing policies and value functions using semi-Markov decision processes. However, there is still a lack of demonstrations in larger nonlinear systems with discrete and continuous variables. To narrow this gap between industrial practices and academic ideas, we address the problem of designing efficient algorithms to facilitate the deployment of HRL ideas in more realistic settings. In particular, we propose Bayesian active learning methods to learn the relevant aspects of either policies or value functions by focusing on the most relevant parts of the parameter and state spaces respectively. To demonstrate the scalability of our solution, we have applied it to The Open Racing Car Simulator (TORCS), a 3D game engine that implements complex vehicle dynamics. The environment is a large topological map roughly based on downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Higher level abstract tasks are also learned in this process using a model-based extension of the MAXQ algorithm. Our solution demonstrates how HRL can be scaled to large applications with complex, discrete and continuous non-linear dynamics.

ABSTRACT Much is known about the process of sponsorship selection with respect to the key personnel involved in the buying decision and also about the strategic objectives for sponsorship. However, few investigations have focused on how sponsors assess the relative value of different sponsorship activities. This research project examined sponsorship decision-making with reference to the way managers discuss, think, and act when evaluating a sponsorship property for the first time. It focuses in particular on understanding how sponsors make decisions when selecting a new activity; how perceptions of risk influence their choice behaviours; the relative value they attribute to different sponsorship features; and how individual factors influence their choice of sponsorship domain. This research program considered these issues from three dimensions (1) linguistically (i.e. how firms publicly describe and explain their sponsorship selection procedures to others); (2) cognitively (i.e. how sponsorship experts describe and rationalise the decision process); and (3) conatively (i.e. how sponsorship managers report they behave when making sponsorship selection decisions). First, Study 1 explored the linguistic dimension of sponsorship selection through a content analysis of the sponsorship policies and guidelines of 298 global, national and local firms. The content analysis of these documents was conducted using Leximancer text analysis software. The analysis revealed six attributes were particularly important. These were the cost of sponsorship rights fees; the capacity of the sponsorship to achieve brand marketing objectives; the opportunities for brand exposure; the sharing of values between partners; the type/domain of the sponsorship activity; and its geographic reach. Firms avoided activities likely to damage their corporate or brand image by alienating sections of the community or by violating social norms. Next, Study 2 explored the cognitive dimension of sponsorship through a series of in-depth interviews with 16 sponsors and 20 properties. Interviews revealed that while practitioners supported the importance of attributes similar to those identified in Study 1, they placed more emphasis on the duration of the sponsorship agreement, the partner’s reputation and sponsorship management ability, and on the level of involvement, and less emphasis on shared values and geographic reach. Risk assessment was implicit in their due diligence practices. Risk mitigation strategies included risk avoidance, risk reduction, risk retention, and risk transfer. Study 3 examined the conative dimension of the sponsorship selection process using a full-profile choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiment completed by 196 sponsorship managers. The respondents evaluated 17 sets of fully-randomised fictitious sponsorship proposals constructed using the attributes identified in the previous two studies. Hierarchical Bayes (HB) analysis showed that the degree of fit with brand objectives, the duration of the sponsorship, and the perceived quality of the partner relationship exerted the strongest influence on sponsor preferences. Specifically, sponsors placed the highest value on sponsorships that offered a very high fit with their brand objectives, a one-year agreement, a good partner relationship, were cause-related, had a State-wide reach, involved a title sponsorship, a combination of cash and in-kind payment, and offered print media exposure. Finally, to examine the influence of individual factors (i.e. gender, the level of decision-making authority, and experience in decision-making) on the choice of sponsorship domain (i.e. sport sponsorship, arts sponsorship, cause-related sponsorship, and celebrity endorsement), three sponsorship simulations were conducted as part of Study 3 using Share of Preference modelling. The results showed that cause-related sponsorship was the most strongly preferred domain in each of the three models, whereas celebrity endorsement was the least preferred. While female managers were indifferent to arts or sport sponsorship, male managers showed a strong preference for sport sponsorship over arts sponsorship. Managers were less interested in sport sponsorship than more senior executives. The preferences of managers with the least experience were consistent with those of highly-experienced sponsors. However, managers with 11-15 years experience showed much less interest in sport sponsorship than others. Conceptually, this program of research allowed for the development of a decision-making model that provides the basis for future investigations of sponsorship value. For the practitioner, the results of this research support previous findings about the significance of sponsorship activities having a good fit with the sponsor’s brand objectives. As well, properties with a good reputation for building high-quality sponsorship relationships will find favour with new sponsors.

Pour réduire la consommation énergétique des bâtiments, les systèmes de chauffage agissant par rayonnement semblent particulièrement intéressants puisqu'ils ne nécessitent pas de chauffer l'air de la pièce pour que leur action soit perçue (moins d'énergie dépensée et moins de déperditions) et qu'jls permettent une meilleure réactivité au mode de vie des utilisateurs. De plus, des expériences réalisées au MIT ont montré que nous préférons un air frais et des murs chauds plutôt que le contraire, ce qui milite en paveur du chauffage par rayonnement. L'objectif de ce travail est de développer un outil permettant de paire le lien entre le rayonnement échangé entre un occupant et son environnement et le confort qu'il exprime vis-a- vis de celui-ci. L'étude des transferts radiatifs dans l'habitat peut se ramener a la résolution de l'équation des radiosités. Celle-ci nécessite l'évaluation de couplages géométriques entre les éléments de la scène appelés facteurs de forme. Leur obtention est particulièrement ardue, notamment lorsqu'il s'agit de tenir compte d'éventuelles obstructions. Une comparaison des méthodes numériques disponibles pour cela est proposée. Outre l'évaluation de ces facteurs, le système a résoudre est très lourd, puisque chaque surface interagit, le plus souvent, avec toutes les autres et que le nombre de nœuds mis en jeu dans la description d'une scène complexe est important. Nous présentons une méthode de résolution qui raffine le maillage d'une scène tout en construisant simultanément une représentation a différentes échelles des facteurs de forme entre ses éléments, dans le but de ne pas calculer tous les échanges a la résolution la plus fine. Elle permet ainsi de réduire considérablement le temps de calcul et rend son utilisation possible en bureau d'étude.une fois que les transferts radiatifs entre un individu, la source de chauffage et différents éléments de l'environnement sont connus, le modèle de confort de Fanger est mis en oeuvre pour déterminer si les configurations envisagées sont confortables ou non, au regard des normes en vigueur dans le bâtiment. Ainsi, nous avons pu déterminer quels types d'appareils de chauffage sont les plus susceptibles d'apporter du confort, dans diverses situations, et sans accroitre la puissance consommée. / In order to reduce building's energy consumption, radiant heater seems particularly attractives because they didn't require to heat the air of the room to be perceived (less energy spent and less losses), and because they provide a better reactivity to users life rythmes. Moreover, experiences of the MIT showed that we prefer a fresh ai with warm wall rather than the opposite. The goal of the work is to develop a tool to study the link between the radiant energy exchange by an occupant with his environment and the thermal comfort express under some hypothesis, radiative beat transfers can be idealized by the radiosity equation. This one needs the evaluation of geometrics couplings between the elements of the scene called form factors or view factors. It's generally hard to get them, especially when there are obstructions. A comparison of existing numerical methods is proposed. beyond the evaluation of those factors, the algebraic system is heavy to solve because each surface interact, usually, with all the others and because the number of nodes required for the description of a complexe scene is important. We present a resolution method which refine the mesh of the scene while constructing a multi scale representation of form factors between its elements, in order to don't have to compute all the transfers at the finest resolution. This drastically reduce the computation time and allow to use this method in a industrial development process.When the radiative transfers between the occupant, heaters and differents elements of the environment are known, the thermal comfort model of fanger is used to determine if the considered env!ronments are confortable or not, according to international standards. This way, we could find which type of heaters are the most subject to provide thermal comfort without increasing energy consumption.

The selection of the best response variables in a clinical trial is often not straightforward; the primary endpoint of a trial should be clinically relevant, directly related to the primary objective of the trial, and with favorable efficiency to detect the treatment benefit with a reasonable sample size and duration of the trial. With the recent success in the management of heart failure, the mortality rate has dropped significantly compared to two decades ago, and patients with heart failure have high rates of hospitalization and morbid complications along with multiple symptoms and severe limitations in daily activities. Although mortality still remains important as a measure of the clinically relevant benefit and the safety of the intervention, with the low event rate of mortality, it requires large and longer clinical trials to detect treatment benefit of new intervention using mortality as the sole primary endpoint. Thus most heart failure trials use the combined endpoint of death and a second efficacy outcome, such as hospitalizations. This is often analyzed with time-to-first-event survival analysis which ignores possible subsequent hospitalization events and treating the death and first hospitalization equally in the importance and hierarchy of clinical relevance. Accounting for the recurrent events or subsequent death after the hospitalization(s) provides more detailed information on the disease-control process and treatment benefit. In this dissertation we propose a hierarchical endpoint with death in the higher priority and number of hospitalization events in the lower priority as primary endpoint to assess experimental treatment benefit versus a control using a non-parametric generalized Gehan-Wilcoxon test. In addition to the hierarchical endpoint, we also evaluated assessment of experimental treatment benefit on recurrent events with a multi-state model using extended stratified Cox model, considering the multi-states in which patients might transition during the study. We compared the false positive rate and power of the above mentioned methods with the composite endpoint approach and recurrent event endpoint approach analyzed using Andersen-Gill, WLW, and PWP models in simulation studies. Finally we applied all evaluated procedures to the Digitalis Investigation Group (DIG) trial.

Human flexible behaviour is often seen in everyday life tasks. These tasks (e.g., making coffee) are composed of actions (e.g., pouring sugar) that are typically nested within a large task structures made of superordinate components and nested subcomponents. Task switching has been adopted widely as an effective tool to explore the mechanisms of flexible behaviour and can be easily adapted to real-life situations. The core hypothesis explored in this thesis was that there might be another level of control that is responsible for coordinating and scheduling actions in task switching, which I label "meta-control". My first project aimed to establish robust behavioural evidence of meta-control. To test this hypothesis, switching efficiency was treated as a measure of meta-control influence. In a novel design, participants' beliefs about switch probability were manipulated through explicit instruction, allowing manipulation of meta-level control independent of the specific sequence of tasks required. The first three behavioural experiments demonstrated behaviorally that instructions influenced the efficiency of switching even when low-level (bottom-up) experience was matched, and that this effect was motivation-dependent. In follow-up studies, this meta-control influence was found to bias voluntary task selection. Two EEG studies aimed to characterize the level at which instruction affected processing. Motor and task levels were examined with lateralized motor potentials and oscillatory alpha power, respectively. Effects of instruction only existed on alpha power. Overall, the results suggest that expectancy prompts the adoption of distinct control modes across sequences of trials. The second project explored meta-control in a task switching paradigm with a hierarchical task structure in very short (2-4 trial) sequences that were preceded by instructions about switch frequency or switch position. The experiments focused on the benefits and costs of sequence structure, based on the hypothesis that trial sequences are treated as coherent units. Three behavioural studies were conducted for testing this hypothesis. The first utilized instructions about switch frequency to test for sequence transition effects and their influence on switching performance at the trial level. In two subsequent experiments, instructions made explicit the position of a task switch. The results confirmed that instructions about switch position helped participants to build useful sequence representations, and that alternating between sequences influenced trial-level switch processes. Generally, sequence representations have a persisting influence across trials and a pronounced impact at the first trial position of sequences. The experiments in this thesis provide evidence of meta-control in task switching. The first conclusion is that meta-control can be studied with the novel experimental design introduced in this thesis and was found to be reward dependent. The second conclusion is that meta-control acts as a set of parameters that can modulate the mode of control in a sustained way across trials.

Internalizing problems are prevalent in childhood and adolescence in both community and out-of-home populations. Internalizing symptoms are frequently associated with problems in other areas of functioning as well. For children in out-of-home care, who face additional adversities such as maltreatment and witnessing traumatic events, internalizing problems have shown increased prevalence while less frequently addressed in research. The current studies used longitudinal data collected across 7 years from a sample of 1,765 children, 5 to 14 years old, in out-of-home care in Maryland, USA. Data consisted mainly of Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessments, as well as demographic information (age, sex, and race/ethnicity) and out-of-home placement type. In Study 1 we examined the trajectories of anxiety and depression across age and time in care separately and evaluated a comprehensive model of resilience for each outcome using hierarchical linear modeling. This exploratory model included both indicators of internal resilience (i.e. cognitive, emotional, spiritual, physical, behavioural) and environmental risk and resilience factors (i.e. family, acculturation, community, placement, school functioning, social functioning) related to internalizing problems in children and adolescents. Results showed anxiety was fairly stable over time in care and age, with few significant predictors aside from already well-known risk factors. Depression results showed a slight increase across age and decrease across time in care with several more significant predictors than the anxiety model. While both models showed overlap in predictors, they also included predictors unique to each outcome. In Study 2 we examined the reciprocal relationships across time between anxiety, depression, and significant risk and protective factors from Study 1. Using time lagged hierarchical linear models we found few significant relationships related to anxiety, and largely unidirectional relationships between depression and relevant factors over time. Two factors, traumatic stress and placement in residential treatment care, displayed reciprocal relationships with depression over time. However, our results largely did not support the direct resilience feedback mechanisms proposed between variables for either outcome, but revealed other possible mechanisms at work (i.e. dual cascades developmental model) to explain maladaptation towards depression in particular, but also anxiety. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical implications, future research directions, and applied implications for prevention/intervention programs for internalizing problems for children in out-of-home care.

This work is inspired by Lipsitz (1998) and Allport (1954) because both authors connect micro level processes to social macro level patterns. Allport’s Nature of Prejudice sought to understand patterns of anti-Semitism as connected to a larger social context. From this work, Allport developed the contact hypothesis which is premised on the idea that diversity helps alleviate racial tensions. Lipsitz’ Possessive Investment in Whiteness connects White racial privilege to a history of racial social inequality. In conintuum, I develop the nuances on prejudice formation as it leads to the denial of racial privilege or to the conflation of privileges as oppression. While I focus on White racial privilege, the theoretical contribution of my research develops the framework for individual privilege formation. I then draw upon Bonilla-Silva’s (2013) racial colorblind theory to emphasize the connection between privilege and larger patterns of racial attitudes. The macro level contribution of this dissertation focuses on patterns of overt and colorblind attitudes as affected by racial segregation, social inequality, and respondent characteristics. Data was gathered from the 2000 General Social Survey, 2010 GSS, and U.S. Census county data and applied to a hierarchical linear model. Due to sample selection, this research focuses on racial Whites’ attitudes about the racial Black population. I use measures of racial segregation as proxies for racial contact. I find patterns of racial tolerance through a ‘separate but equal’ storyline among White-Black segregation. When using, social demographics with all minorities included, I find that Whites’ attitudes about racial Blacks are attenuated. This finding supports the literature that non-Black racial minorities act as buffers for White-Black racial relations. Racial diversity is one element in helping alleviate negative racial sentiments, but patterns of segregation and social inequality impact the benefits of this racial diversity.