Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-187).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2000. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 208 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-72).

The Hampton Roads Sanitation District is heading a Managed Aquifer Recharge project designed to build water resiliency for the district as well as meet recent regulations concerning effluent released into the Chesapeake Bay. The Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow (SWIFT) project will include five injection well fields across the Virginian Coast. The first of these fields to be implemented is the James River site, scheduled to begin in 2025. A model of the Virginia Coastal Plain region was created in 2009 and has been used to simulate the combined impact of the full-scale SWIFT project. This study estimated the change in hydraulic head in the Potomac Aquifer System caused by the proposed James River recharge well field at a regional and local level. That estimation required the use of a widely accepted model of the Virginia Coastal Plain developed in 2009 which was subjected to a limited validation using USGS monitoring well data for comparison. That model was then used to establish boundary conditions for a local scale model surrounding the James River site, after which each model was used to run four pumping scenarios with varying rates of recharge. The validation of the Virginia Coastal Plain model found it to be satisfactory for the scope of this work, and it was therefore used to interpolate boundary conditions for the developed local model. The regional and local model both showed an increase in the simulated head values of the Potomac Aquifer System. The regional model simulated a sharper initial increase than the local model, however, long term the local model simulated a greater impact to the groundwater levels from the proposed recharge. / Master of Science / The Potomac Aquifer System (PAS) is a main water source for most of eastern Virginia and high pumping rates have caused notable drawdown in several areas. The Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) has initiated the Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow (SWIFT) project that is designed to alleviate the stress on the PAS by artificially recharging the PAS through injection well. A regional groundwater model, built in 2009, has been used to estimate the impact of the proposed recharge for the SWIFT project at full capacity. This work validated the use of the regional model within the region of the first proposed SWIFT well field at the James River Site. Once the validation was complete, the regional model provided a framework to develop a more detailed model on a smaller scale. That model was then used to simulate the proposed injection well field at varying rates to estimate the effect of the James River Site. This study has shown that the regional model provides an adequate framework to build local scale models. The simulations run in both the regional and local models found that the proposed recharge increases the water levels in the PAS immediately surrounding the well field and that the impact is felt to distances exceeding 50 miles after 10 years.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1995.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1995.

Univ., Diss.--Zürich, 2002.

The exponential improvement in single processor performance has recently come to an end, mainly because clock frequency has reached its limit due to power constraints. Thus, processor manufacturers are choosing to enhance computing capabilities by placing multiple cores into a single chip, which can improve performance given parallel software. This paradigm shift to chip multiprocessors (also called multicore) requires scalable parallel applications that execute tasks on each core, otherwise the additional cores are worthless. Making an application scalable requires more than simply parallelizing the application code itself. Modern applications are written in managed languages, which require automatic memory management, type and memory abstractions, dynamic analysis and just-in-time (JIT) compilation. These managed runtime systems monitor and interact frequently with the executing application. Hence, the managed runtime itself must be scalable, and the instrumentation that monitors the application should not perturb its scalability. While multicore hardware forces a redesign of managed runtimes for scalability, it also provides opportunities when applications do not fully utilize all of the cores. Using available cores for concurrent helper threads that enhance the software, with debugging, security, and software support will make the runtime itself more capable and more scalable. This dissertation presents two novel techniques that improve the scalability of managed runtimes by utilizing unused cores. The first technique is a concurrent dynamic analysis framework that provides a low-overhead buffering mechanism called Cache-friendly Asymmetric Buffering (CAB) that quickly offloads data from the application to helper threads that perform specific dynamic analyses. Our framework minimizes application instrumentation overhead, prevents microarchitectural side-effects, and supports a variety of dynamic analysis clients, ranging from call graph and path profiling to cache simulation. The use of this framework ensures that helper threads perturb the performance of application as little as possible. Our second technique is concurrent trace-based just-in-time compilation, which exploits available cores for the JavaScript runtime. The JavaScript language limits applications to a single-thread, so extra cores are worthless unless they are used by the runtime components. We redesigned a production trace-based JIT compiler to run concurrently with the interpreter, and our technique is the first to improve both responsiveness and throughput in a trace-based JIT compiler. This thesis presents the design and implementation of both techniques and shows that they improve scalability and core utilization when running applications in managed runtimes. Industry is already adopting our approaches, which demonstrates the urgency of the scalable runtime problem and the utility of these techniques. / text

Matching teaching style to learning style has been proven to be beneficial in (1) increasing academic achievement, (2) improving students' attitudes toward school, and (3) reducing discipline problems. Thus, over the years, learning-style inventories have been developed to ascertain a student's learning styles. However, traditional paper-and-pencil inventories can be time consuming and sometimes provide inaccurate reports. Therefore, this study, descriptive in nature, was designed to examine the feasibility of delivering a learning-style inventory via computer. The questions posed were: (1) Is the computer-based delivery system easier to use than the paper-and-pencil method? (2) Does the computer-based delivery system reduce the amount of mathematical errors made by the instructor or student in scoring the inventory as compared to the paper-and-pencil method? (3) Does the computer-based delivery system reduce the amount of time needed to take the inventory and compile the results as compared to the paper-and-pencil method? (4) Does the computer-based delivery system reduce the amount of paperwork required of the instructor as compared to the paper-and-pencil method? (5) Do the instructor and student find the information compiled by the computer-based delivery system useful? To conduct the study, a sample of 295 students and six teachers from a southwestern high school was selected. One-half of the students received a paper-and-pencil version of the inventory and the second half received a computer-based version. After completing the inventory, each student was asked to complete a short questionnaire. The six instructors were then asked to complete several tasks involving retrieval and manipulation of information about the students. When finished, the instructors also completed a questionnaire. Data was collected on the students' and instructors' perceptions of the inventory, time to complete the inventory, and error rate in completing the inventory. From this data, it was concluded that there was no significant difference in the students' preferences between the two methods. However, a significant advantage became evident for the computer-based version when the completion times, error rates and instructors' perceptions were examined.

This is a study of the organisational change to self-managed team working in UK-based manufacturing organisations. There are few models to guide research into the organisational change to team working and this study focuses on the under-researched area of the implementation process. Descriptions of team development models imply a smooth, linear change process. Yet this strategic change involves major restructuring at an operational level and in reality is a complex and political transition process that unfolds in unpredictable directions. This research proposes a processual framework to explore team development and to increase understanding of the ways in which this transition is shaped at critical junctures. This research was based on case study data collected over periods of up to five years in four brownfield, manufacturing organisations. This data provided detailed illustrations of the major challenges facing organisations in the transition to self-management. Specifically, the research findings indicated that the change to self-managed team working was an unfolding, non-linear process and that its success was shaped not only by the congruence between team design and production setting, but also by the congruence between new work structures and supporting organisational arrangements. Senior management commitment was pivotal to the success of the change process, as were clear definitions of operational roles and required actions and behaviours. Finally, the research indicated the importance of key players adopting appropriate change-driver roles and of paying attention to political tensions and perceived threats associated with changes to traditional role demarcations. This research increases understanding of the implementation and development of self managed work teams at an operational level and the results may be of considerable practical use for organisations in determining their strategies for organisational change and development.

I describe in detail the structure of separately managed accounts (SMAs) and how those accounts compare to and differ from mutual funds and hedge funds. I then examine how employee ownership of advisory firms — that is, firms in which employees have partnership or stock interests — affects the performance, idiosyncratic risk, and R-square of each firm’s SMA portfolios. In testing 14,484 different portfolios from more than 1,100 different advisory firms from 1995 to 2015, I find that SMAs at firms with employee ownership outperform SMAs at firms without it. The greatest impact is in the 25–50% employee-ownership range. Positive returns, risk, and all decrease as employee ownership increases beyond 50%, but SMA performance levels remain above those of firms in which the portfolio manager has no employee ownership. I also find that the Sharpe ratio is negatively related to employee ownership, reflecting a deterioration of risk-adjusted returns at higher employee-ownership levels. These results suggest both that the presence of advisor employee ownership is a significant, positive indicator for SMA performance and that those advisory firms assume more idiosyncratic risk to achieve these higher returns. For investors, my results show that employee ownership of advisory firms can be used as a differentiating factor to aid them in making SMA choices between portfolios with otherwise similar characteristics.