Usability is one of the most important quality attributes in the new generation of software applications and computational devices. On the other hand, Model- View-Controller is a well known software architectural pattern and is widely used in its original form or its variations. The relationship between usability and the usage of Model-View-Controller, however, is still unknown. This thesis tries to contribute to this research question by providing the outcomes of a case study where a prototype has been developed in two different versions: one using Model-View-Controller and another using a widely known Object-Oriented guideline, the GRASP patterns. Those prototypes have been developed based on a non-functional prototype with a good level of usability. With the prototypes in hands, they were compared based on their design and based on the usability heuristics proposed by Nielsen. From this study, we discovered that the usage of MVC brings more advantages and disadvantages to the usability of the system than the ones that were found on the literature review. In general, the relationship between MVC and usability is beneficial, easing the implementation of usability features like validation of input data, evolutionary consistency, multiple views, inform the result of actions and skip steps in a process.

A Thesis submitted to The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine.

De senaste åren har det börjat dyka upp system för att köra virtuella skrivbordsdatorer. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) är ett koncept för just det, och ett av de system som finns på marknaden är utvecklat av VMware och har fått namnet View. Frågeställningen som har legat till grund för denna utredning var om prestandan och användarupplevelsen hos en virtuell maskin i ett VDI-system idag är tillräckligt bra för att kunna ersätta en fysisk dator som arbetsdator. För att utreda detta skapades en View-miljö med två olika virtuella maskiner som sedan användes och utvärderades. Därtill användes även prestandatestmjukvaran PassMark PerformanceTest för att utvärdera datorernas prestanda och för att kunna jämföra resultaten med de hos två vanliga laptops. Resultatet av utredningen blev att de virtuella maskiner som skapades inte är tillräckligt bra att arbeta med för att idag kunna ersätta fysiska arbetsdatorer fullt ut, men att det finns användning för dem inom begränsade områden och att framtiden för teknologin är ljus.

A Thesis submitted to The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine. / CT abdomen and pelvis is a widely-used imaging modality used in the evaluation of appendicitis but it carries risks of radiation. A recent retrospective review localizes all appendices (both normal and abnormal) below the level of the L1 vertebral body, obviating the need to scan superior to that level. This study is a retrospective review of prospectively-collected data from 171 consecutive pediatric patients presenting with clinical suspicion of acute appendicitis and undergoing “low FOV CT.” The low FOV CT uses the L1 vertebral body as the superior aspect of the exam instead of the of the dome of the diaphragm as in standard CT.

This study has addressed a central issue, a gap in our existing knowledge, literature, analysis, an understanding of the role of state in resource seeking. Whilst the role and operations of the firm, has long been a primary focus of research in Strategic Management, analysis of the role and influence of the state with respect to firms has been relatively under-researched. To investigate this core research question, the study identified and applied the well-established theoretical and methodological approach, the Resource Based View of the ‘firm’ (RBV), developing it further to incorporate and mainstream the factor of the state and elaborating a fresh analytical approach, termed the resource-based view of the ‘state’ (RBS). The new RBS conceptual framework has been proposed by extending the central proposition of the RBV of the firm- that a firm must acquire and control valuable and non-substitutable resources and capabilities, into a multidisciplinary integration of both the institution based view (IBV) approach and the role of the contemporary state in providing resources and capabilities to firms. The central problematic this research is seeking to explore is the new resource-based approach of the Indian state. The state is seeking the acquisition of energy assets overseas, using institutional support mechanisms and the deployment of specific state capabilities and resources. Using an in-depth case analysis of the Indian state, this thesis provides evidence of the resource-based approach, in which the state provides a strategic intent for its firms, creates strategic markets for the firms to compete in as well as providing intangible resources. The state is also presented as a source of new intangible resources that provide competitive advantage and insulate firms from competition in specific markets. Insights from elite interviewees representing a cross-section of institutional actors such as academics, ambassadors, senior government officials, policy planners, advises the state, personnel from state-owned and private resource seeking firms as well as from the fourth estate, in the thesis has provided a rich contextual information to evidence resource seeking in the contemporary Indian state. The key contribution of the new conceptual framework, the RBS model has been in integrating a multidisciplinary approach to the traditional resource based view theory of the firm. Using the institutional context of the Indian state, this thesis has provided an appropriate context for the validation of the RBV of the firm.

Een van die fundamenteelste en belangrikste aspekte van 'n roman is die verteller. Die verhouding waarin die verteller tot die verhaalstof staan, die verteller se perspektief op die gebeure, die soort verteller en die manier waarop die verteller sy implisiete leser deur die organisasie van die verhaal definieer en betrek is almal bepalende faktore vir die struktuur, die styl en die ontwikkelingsgang van die roman. Joseph T. Shipley (1966:144) stel die saak so: "In die analysis of a speech or literary composition, nothing is more important than to determine precisely the voice or voices presented as speaking and the precise nature of the address (i.e. specific direction to a hearer, an addressee); for in every speech reference to a voice or voices and implication of address (i.e. reference to a process of speech, actual or imagined) is a part of the meaning, for the interpretation of which it supplies an indispensable control ".

The thesis deals with the analysis of commonly available textbooks for the development of the Spring framework. Identifies weaknesses of these textbooks and uses them to de-sign their own way of writing textbooks. Individual stages of development are demon-strated on a sample application that is initially designed with respect to real requirements for web application and interconnection of different technologies. During the incremental development of the application, the implementation methods are described together with the solution of the problems that have occurred.

KIBS providers are organizations that perform knowledge intensive business activities mainly for other organizations and in the present age have become key components of industrialized economies. The primary purpose of KIBS providers is to deliver customized solutions to clients through the implementation of three core knowledge processes: knowledge acquisition, knowledge recombination, and knowledge diffusion. Existing research has predominantly focused on understanding the importance of these providers in creating a competitive edge for their clients. However, little is known in terms of how such providers can create an improved competitive position for themselves. This research helps to understand whether the use of knowledge processes influences the competitive advantage¬ of KIBS providers. A guiding framework developed from literature posits that such generic knowledge processes may provide competitive advantage for a given provider if they are transformed into valuable, rare, inimitable, and well-exploited resources (VRIO). The study follows a holistic multiple case research design of three IT service providers to refine the existing theory on the influence of knowledge processes on the competitive advantage of KIBS providers. Data was collected through interviews of employees occupying different roles in a company to provide their perspectives on the various parts of the framework. The findings of this study reveal that participants perceive knowledge processes to provide competitive advantage to their companies. However, data analysis using the VRIO framework indicates that knowledge processes do not confer competitive advantage by themselves, but rather through an emerging theme called delivery. Findings also indicate that delivery influences other factors of competitive advantage. The study contributes to the existing literature as it leads to a refined understanding of the relationship between knowledge processes and competitive advantage by highlighting the importance of delivery as a dynamic capability. The study has practical implications for managers as it informs them that delivery improves brand name, reduces costs, and helps to achieve client satisfaction.

In multi-view video applications, view synthesis is a computationally intensive task that needs to be done correctly and efficiently in order to deliver a seamless user experience. In order to provide fast and efficient view synthesis, in this thesis, we present a cloud-based implementation that will be especially beneficial to mobile users whose devices may not be powerful enough for high quality view synthesis. Our proposed implementation balances the view synthesis algorithm’s components across multiple threads and utilizes the computational capacity of modern CPUs for faster and higher quality view synthesis. For arbitrary view generation, we utilize the depth map of the scene from the cameras’ viewpoint and estimate the depth information conceived from the virtual camera. The estimated depth is then used in a backward direction to warp the cameras’ image onto the virtual view. Finally, we use a depth-aided inpainting strategy for the rendering step to reduce the effect of disocclusion regions (holes) and to paint the missing pixels. For our cloud implementation, we employed an automatic scaling feature to offer elasticity in order to adapt the service load according to the fluctuating user demands. Our performance results using 4 multi-view videos over 2 different scenarios show that our proposed system achieves average improvement of 3x speedup, 87% efficiency, and 90% CPU utilization for the parallelizable parts of the algorithm.

Common cameras with a dynamic range of two orders cannot reproduce typical outdoor scenes with a radiance range of over five orders. Most high dynamic range (HDR) imaging techniques reconstruct the whole dynamic range from exposure bracketed low dynamic range (LDR) images. But the camera must be kept steady with no or small motion, which is not practical in many cases. Thus, we develop a more efficient framework for omnidirectional HDR imaging with a moving camera. The proposed framework is composed of three major stages: geometric calibration and rotational alignment, multi-view stereo correspondence and HDR composition. First, camera poses are determined and omnidirectional images are rotationally aligned. Second, the aligned images are fed into a spherical vision toolkit to find disparity maps. Third, enhanced disparity maps are used to warp differently exposed neighboring images to a target view and an HDR radiance map is obtained by fusing the registered images in radiance. We develop disparity-based forward and backward image warping algorithms for spherical stereo vision and implement them in GPU. We also explore some techniques for disparity map enhancement including a superpixel technique and a color model for outdoor scenes. We examine different factors such as exposure increment step size, sequence ordering, and the baseline between views. We demonstrate the success with indoor and outdoor scenes and compare our results with two state-of-the-art HDR imaging methods. The proposed HDR framework allows us to capture HDR radiance maps, disparity maps and an omnidirectional field of view, which has many applications such as HDR view synthesis and virtual navigation.