No description available.

Discussion des termes clés des langages de description; nécessité d'une sémantique matérielle. Le langage IRENE sert à la description comportemental et structurelle des circuits intégrés VLSI. Principes du simulateur fonctionnel du langage IRENE, des outils de synthèse KARENE et MACSIM et d'une interface avec le compilateur de silicium SYCO. KASRENE assure l'intégration des langages IRENE et KARL. Solution basée sur une organisation centrée objet de la base de données d'un système de conception assistée de VLSI

A two-dimensional numerical model (RiverFLO-2D) has been enhanced to simulate flooding of urban areas by developing an innovative wet and dry surface algorithm, accounting for variable rainfall, and recoding the model computer program for parallel computing. The model formulation is based on the shallow water equations solved with an explicit time-stepping element-by-element finite element method. The dry-wet surface algorithm is based on a local approximation of the continuity and momentum equations for elements that are completely dry. This algorithm achieves global volume conservation in the finite element, even for flows over complex topographic surfaces. A new module was implemented to account for variable rainfall in space and time using NEXRAD precipitation estimates. The resulting computer code was parallelized using OpenMP Application Program Interface, which allows the model to run up to 5 times faster on multiple core computers. The model was verified with analytical solutions and validated with laboratory and field data. Model application to the Malpasset dam break and Sumacarcel flooding event show that the model accurately predicts flood wave travel times and water depths for these numerically demanding real cases. To illustrate the predictive capability of the enhanced model, an application was made of the city of Sweetwater flooding in Miami-Dade County, FL caused by the Hurricane Irene. The simulation starts with dry bed and rainfall is provided by NEXRAD estimates. Integrating NEXRAD rainfall estimates, developing a novel dry-wet area algorithm and parallelizing RiverFLO-2D code, this dissertation presents a proof of concept to accurately and efficiently predict floods in urban areas, identifying future improvements along this line of research.

Not available / text

The phenomenon of climate change exists in a liminal state between denial and acceptance, past and future, theory and reality, problem and catastrophe, unfolding in the spaces between apparently stable forms. This thesis considers different temporalities emerging within this transition through a creative exploration of extreme weather and climatic events that seeks to foreground the idea of change itself. Research centers around the Florida Keys, a low lying archipelago that is widely expected to become uninhabitable in the next half century due to sea level rise, but only if the islands do not suffer a similar fate much sooner with the sudden arrival of a catastrophic hurricane. While most Keys residents are unconcerned about the growing reality of sea level rise, hurricanes are a constant threat generating a palpable atmosphere of anticipation and corresponding precaution. In resonance with this regular storm activity in the Florida Keys, the project also reflects on the coincidental occurrence of Hurricanes Irene (2011) and Sandy (2012), two errant and devastating storms that visited the northeastern United States over the course of this project and personally affected the author. Thus, extreme weather provides a material entry point into the complex and far-reaching event of climate change, offering an opportunity to theorize transition and to reflect on what might be creatively recuperated from cross currents of climate and catastrophe. In conclusion, the thesis proposes an ontology inspired by the unique reproductive strategy of the mangrove plant that has thickly and extensively colonized the coastline of southern Florida and through which events are understood to possess qualities of latency, accrual and distribution and to give rise to a future that is germinal, a present that is continuously resignified and a past that remains profoundly creative.

No description available.

As an Actor Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors, theatrical violence is something that has always captivated me. When a female combat instructor once told me that even though I throw a great punch I will never be able to use it because women are always on the receiving end of violence in theatre, I wondered if this was truly the case. After a thorough exploration of several works with theatrical violence, I am glad to say that it is not the case. When most scholars examine violence in theatre, the focus is either male-centric or specifically on domestic violence situations involving a male abusing a female. I will examine theatrical violence through a new lens that has yet to be thoroughly critically explored: violence where the female is the aggressor. Through selected works of three American minority female playwrights: Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood, Maria Irene Fornes' Conduct of Life, and Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, I will analyze the female-enacted violence that occurs within these plays using feminist theories and psychology to examine how it happens, why it happens, who the victims are, and what these acts of violence say about minority American women in society today. I will explore the stage directions and dialogue surrounding the violence and analyzing the use or absence of weaponry, the breakdown or build-up of language prior to and after the violent action, and whether or not the violent action occurs before or after a violent action is committed against the female. For comparison, I will also analyze work by an American male playwright with violence in the same way: Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.

Description des différentes étapes de la conception d'un microprocesseur pour le contrôle des automatismes de sécurité, en particulier pour les systèmes de transport. Ce microprocesseur est autotestable, c'est-à-dire capable de détecter ses propres erreurs. La conception du circuit est basée sur les hypothèses de pannes au niveau analytique dans la technologie NMOS. Les blocs fonctionnels «Strongly Fault Secure» et les contrôleurs «Strongly Code Disjoint» sont à la base des circuits «Self-checking», dits autotestables. Le circuit COBRA démontre la faisabilité d'un microprocesseur autotestable. COBRA gère indépendamment 19 signaux différents, date des événements externes, mesure des fréquences, surveille 14 entrées logiques et possède 7 sorties indépendantes. Le programme d'application de COBRA est contenu dans une mémoire morte programmable externe de 16 Koctets adressés par 14 bits multiplexés sur le bus interne de 8 bits. COBRA contient également une liaison série, une mémoire à accès direct de 64 octets et 3 temporisateurs de 14 bits indépendants ainsi qu'une unité arithmétique et logique de 8 bits, COBRA exécute un jeu de 43 instructions

This thesis focuses on a transformational but disregarded period in New Zealand’s twentieth century history, the era from the arrival of the Marines in 1942 to the arrival of Rock Around the Clock in 1956. It examines one of the chief agents in this metamorphosis: the impact of American culture. During this era the crucial conduits of that culture were movies, music and comics. The aims of my thesis are threefold: to explore how New Zealanders responded to this cultural trinity, determine the key features of their reactions and assess their significance. The perceived modernity and alterity of Hollywood movies, musical genres such as swing, and the content and presentation of American comics and ‘pulps’, became the sources of heated debate during the midcentury. Many New Zealanders admired what they perceived as the exuberance, variety and style of such American media. They also applauded the willingness of the cultural triptych to appropriate visual, textual and musical forms and styles without respect for the traditional classifications of cultural merit. Such perceived standards were based on the privileged judgements of cultural arbiters drawn from members of New Zealand’s educational and civic elites. Key figures within these elites insisted that American culture was ‘low’, inferior and commodified, threatening the dominance of a sacrosanct, traditional ‘high’culture. Many of them also maintained that these American cultural imports endangered both the traditionally British nature of our cultural heritage, and New Zealand’s distinctively ‘British’ identity. Many of these complaints enfolded deeper objections to American movies, music and literary forms exemplified by comics and pulps. Significant intellectual and civic figures portrayed these cultural modes as pernicious and malignant, because they were allegedly the product of malignant African-American, Jewish and capitalist sources, which threatened to poison the cultural and social values of New Zealanders, especially the young. In order to justify such attitudes, these influential cultural guardians portrayed the general public as an essentially immature, susceptible, unthinking and puritanical mass. Accordingly, this public, supposedly ignorant of the dangers posed by American culture, required the intervention and protection of members of this elite. Responses to these potent expressions of American culture provide focal points which both illuminate and reflect wider social, political and ideological controversies within midcentury New Zealand. Not only were these reactions part of a process of comprehension and negotiation of new aesthetic styles and media modes. They also represent an arena of public and intellectual contention whose significance has been neglected or under-valued. New Zealanders’ attitudes towards the new cinematic, literary and musical elements of American culture occurred within a rich and revealing socio-political and ideological context. When we comment on that culture we reveal significant features of our own national and cultural selves.