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This thesis established the DSP-based and PC-based system for speech keyword retrieval and recognition according to the same basic algorithm. This system does not need to train speech models, and the keywords and describing sentences do not put the limit of the number of words and could be any language. Before calculating the speech features, the speech signal need to be pre-processed. The pre-process includes DC bias removing, segment, Rabiner & Sambur end point detection, pre-emphasis, and windowing. About the speech features, the system used 12 degrees of Mel-Frequency cepstral coefficient and 12 degrees of delta coefficient to make a 24-degreed speech feature. The key point of the system is the process of pattern comparison. The system adopted dynamic time warping cooperating with one pass algorithm to improve the optimal process. In order to attain the DSP system, using an optimum likelihood ratio threshold to be the determine standard for not keyword rejection. All of the keywords use the same threshold in the method. It improves the original method which uses least differential to set up the threshold by reducing the requirement of ram. After testing in the experiments, the speech keyword retrieval and recognition system both have great recognition and efficiency.

Recent anecdotal evidence has suggested that Lake Diefenbaker, a large reservoir in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, has been experiencing an increased frequency and severity of algal blooms, suggesting significant alterations in water quality. Due to limited historical water quality monitoring, a paleolimnological investigation of Lake Diefenbaker sediments was conducted in order to interpret spatial and temporal trends in the physicochemistry of sediment cores collected from mid-channel locations along a spatial gradient. Total phosphorus and three sediment species of phosphorus (apatite inorganic phosphorus, non-apatite inorganic phosphorus (NAIP) and organic phosphorus (OP) were measured along the vertical profile of the cores to interpret nutrient loading trends. Trends in historical primary productivity were inferred based on total organic carbon, total nitrogen, δ15N values and the organic carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratios. In addition, sub-fossil biological remains of diatoms and chironomid larvae were isolated from selected subsections of the sediment cores and identified to assess shifts in community compositions and to infer historical changes in reservoir water quality conditions. Up-reservoir sampling locations showed consistent concentrations of total phosphorus and the three species of phosphorus, organic carbon, nitrogen, δ15N values and C:N ratios in the vertical profile of collected sediment cores. This suggested relatively consistent nutrient loading and primary production in the up-reservoir regions for the period represented by the core profiles. Down-reservoir sediment cores showed an increasing trend in total phosphorus concentration, mainly in the more biologically available NAIP and OP fractions, and enrichment in organic carbon, nitrogen and 15N in more recently deposited sediments. This combined with a decreasing C:N ratio in more recent sediments suggests increased nutrient loading to the sediments and increasing primary productivity at down-reservoir sites. Strong correlations between sediment total organic carbon content and the more biologically available sediment phosphorus fractions (NAIP and OP) suggest that phosphorus deposition patterns are strongly influenced by primary productivity within the reservoir. The compositions of diatom and chironomid communities were consistent over time at up-reservoir locations, with Stephanodiscus parvus dominating the diatom communities and Procladius sp. dominating the chironomid communities. This suggests relatively stable and consistent trophic status and primary productivity in this region. Conversely, major shifts occurred in the diatom and benthic chironomid communities at down-reservoir locations. These shifts were consistent with typical reservoir ontogeny. A shift in dominance from Stephanodiscus parvus to Asterionella formosa, Tabellaria flocculosa and Stephanodiscus medius followed by a shift to Aulacosiera ambigua suggests an initial period of eutrophy, followed by a period of mesotrophy, and finally a transition into a more productive system in recent years. The increase in relative abundance of the chironomid tribe Tanytarsini suggests rising levels of organic matter sedimentation, likely due to increased autochthonous primary productivity. Low chironomid head capsule counts were observed at all locations within Lake Diefenbaker. Despite the low head capsule counts, a 10-day whole-sediment toxicity test using Chironomus dilutus, revealed that Lake Diefenbaker sediments, in proximity to two potential point sources of contamination (aquaculture and municipal discharge), as well as two reference locations, were not of toxicological concern. Despite the lack of toxicity associated with Lake Diefenbaker sediments, it was concluded that Lake Diefenbaker sediments are likely poor habitat for chironomids. This study suggests that primary productivity and nutrient status has remained relatively constant at up-reservoir locations for the period represented by the collected cores. This is likely due to up-reservoir locations being more riverine than down-reservoir regions, which results in increased turbidity causing phytoplankton populations to be light limited. Primary productivity appears to increase spatially with increased distance down reservoir, likely due to a gradual transition to more lacustrine environments, resulting in less turbidity and less light limitation. Temporally, down-reservoir locations appear to be showing increases in primary productivity and nutrient entrainment in sediments. This is likely a result of increased nutrient availability over time and entrainment of these nutrients in sediments at down-reservoir locations by primary producers.

Technology scaling of CMOS devices has made the integrated circuits vulnerable to single event radiation effects. Scaling of CMOS Static RAM (SRAM) has led to denser packing architectures by reducing the size and spacing of diffusion nodes. However, this trend has led to the increase in charge collection and sharing effects between devices during an ion strike, making the circuit even more vulnerable to a specific single event effect called the single event multiple-node upset (SEMU). In nanometer technologies, SEMU can easily disrupt the data stored in the memory and can be more hazardous than a single event single-node upset. During the last decade, most of the research efforts were mainly focused on improving the single event single-node upset tolerance of SRAM cells by using novel circuit techniques, but recent studies relating to angular radiation sensitivity has revealed the importance of SEMU and Multi Bit Upset (MBU) tolerance for SRAM cells. The research focuses on improving SEMU tolerance of CMOS SRAM cells by using novel circuit and layout level techniques. A novel SRAM cell circuit & layout technique is proposed to improve the SEMU tolerance of 6T SRAM cells with decreasing feature size, making it an ideal candidate for future technologies. The layout is based on strategically positioning diffusion nodes in such a way as to provide charge cancellation among nodes during SEMU radiation strikes, instead of charge build-up. The new design & layout technique can improve the SEMU tolerance levels by up to 20 times without sacrificing on area overhead and hence is suitable for high density SRAM designs in commercial applications. Finally, laser testing of SRAM based configuration memory of a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA is performed to analyze the behavior of SRAM based systems towards radiation strikes.

Yes

Income variability explains a significant fraction of the increase in annual income inequality. Chapter 1 considers the impact of variability on tax unit inequality. Using income tax return panel data, I estimate that between a tenth and a quarter of the increase in top one percent income shares between the early 1980s and 2000s was caused by variability. Increased income variability over this period resulted from mean-reverting fluctuations in the bottom quintile and top one percent. Variability in the top of the distribution seems partly driven by permanent income shifting in response to the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Chapter 2 examines the individual earnings distribution. Using Social Security Administration earnings panel data, I estimate that variability explains half of the increase in annual inequality in the bottom half of the distribution between 1973 and 1985. When workers with years of zero earnings are included, increasing earnings variability explains almost all of this group's increase in inequality. The increase in earnings variability appears to be explained by an increased fraction of working age men with years of zero earnings. Annual individual earnings inequality in the bottom half of the distribution not only increased with variability in the 1970s and 1980s, but also fell with variability in the 1950s and early 1960s. This suggests that the U-shaped trend in income inequality observed over these four decades was partly caused by first a fall and then a rise in earnings variability. Between 1985 and 2000, falling variability caused most of the decline in annual earnings inequality within the bottom half of the distribution. Within the top of the distribution, earnings inequality increased over this period because of changes in permanent earnings and not increasing variability. Income variability means that in a progressive tax system annual and lifetime federal tax rates can diverge. Chapter 3 shows that on an annual basis, those at the bottom of the distribution pay little or no federal income taxes, while on a lifetime basis they pay average tax rates about five percentage points higher. Income variability also means there is a trade-off between vertical and horizontal equity.

This thesis takes the typical one-to-one relationship between a tower and a lobby and asks what if a three-layer base that produces a higher density and a scale exceeding the physical boundary of a single office tower replaces the lobby. Combing retail, conference facilities and recreation the base at once consolidates the programmatic needs of office workers and thickens the singular exchange of lobby-office-lobby to one of recreation-lobby-retail-office-lobby. Spanning the length of a ten-acre site in London, the base establishes a large horizontal floor plate and introduces big-box retail and an economy privileging lower prices onto a site surrounded by boutiques and mom-and-pop stores. Instead of planar adjacencies, retail and towers overlay in section. Vertical, horizontal and transverse circulations intersect, turn and unite, forming new programmatic possibilities and proliferating the cultural, economic and social life of a tower onto the city.

In this thesis, the PC base and DSP base speech keyword retrieval and recognition systems could work. The keywords and describing sentences will not have the limit of word length and could be any languages. Besides, training speech models is not needed anymore. It means that the database gets its expansibility without training speech models again. We can establish the system on the PC base, and calculate the program with fixed-point DSP board. In the processing of speech signal, lots of mathematical functions will be required. We must reach its immediately effect, so that the system could be useful. In addition, compared with floating point, the fixed point DSP cost much less; it makes the system nearer to users. After being tested by experiments, the speech keyword retrieval and recognition system got great recognition and efficiency.

Coaches in Canada are trained through the National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) administered by The Coaching Association of Canada. The NCCP is the national standard and recently shifted its educational emphasis from the transfer of knowledge to the development of coaching competency. As a result, coaches are required to demonstrate competency in a specified sport and level prior to being awarded a coaching certification. The purpose of this study was to establish validity and reliability of an NCCP coaching competency assessment. Gymnastics Canada agreed to have their Community Sport coaching competency instrument tested for content validity, face validity, inter-rater reliability and intra-rater reliability. Their original assessment instrument was revised during content validity testing based on recommendations from five coaching context experts. Removing six items, adding one item, and revising four items for clarity modified the original 48-item instrument. An assessment of overall competency was added to the instrument to rate the coach as Beginner, Competent, Proficient, or Expert. Three certified coaches confirmed the face validity of the modified instrument. Reliability tests were conducted on the ratings provided by ten experts who observed a coach’s lesson on video. The result was a moderate level of inter-rater reliability, displayed by an Agreement Coefficient (AC1) of 0.43 and a Percent of Agreement (PA) of 72%. Nine of the ten raters assessed the coach’s performance as Competent, Proficient or Expert, while one of the ten rated the coach as Beginner. After a repeat observation of the same coaching performance, the intra-rater reliability of five raters resulted in agreement levels of Moderate (AC1 = 0.45; PA = 67%), Substantial (AC1 = 0.75, 0.77; PA = 81%, 89%), and Almost Perfect (AC1 = 0.87, 0.82; PA = 93%, 90%). The modified instrument has content and face validity. However, its usefulness is impacted by variability in rater preferences. The inter-rater reliability results attest to concerns about the consistency in assessment of a coaching certificate for Community Sport Artistic Gymnastics coaches. Suggestions to improve the reliability of the instrument include training raters to classify the coach’s competency on a standardized scale of sport-specific expertise.

Information integration has been widely addressed over the last several decades. However, it is far from solved due to the complexity of resolving schema and data heterogeneities. In this paper, we propose out attempt to alleviate such difficulty by realizing keyword search functionality for integrating information from heterogeneous databases. Our solution does not require predefined global schema or any mappings between databases. Rather, it relies on an operator called keyword join to take a set of lists of partial answers from different data sources as input, and output a list of results that are joined by the tuples from input lists based on predefined similarity measures as integrated results. Our system allows source databases remain autonomous and the system to be dynamic and extensible. We have tested our system with real dataset and benchmark, which shows that our proposed method is practical and effective. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)