The semiconductor technology development empowers fabrication of extremelycomplex integrated circuits (ICs) that may contain billions of transistors. Suchhigh integration density enables designing an entire system onto a single chip,commonly referred to as a System-on-Chip (SoC). In order to boost performance,it is increasingly common to design SoCs that contain a number of processors, socalled multi-processor system-on-chips (MPSoCs).While on one hand, recent semiconductor technologies enable fabrication ofdevices such as MPSoCs which provide high performance, on the other hand thereis a drawback that these devices are becoming increasingly susceptible to faults.These faults may occur due to escapes from manufacturing test, aging effects orenvironmental impacts. When present in a system, faults may disrupt functionalityand can cause incorrect system operation. Therefore, it is very importantwhen designing systems to consider methods to tolerate potential faults. To copewith faults, there is a need of fault handling which implies automatic detection,identification and recovery from faults which may occur during the system’s operation.This work is about the design and implementation of a fault handling methodsfor an MPSoC. A fault aware Resource Manager (RM) is designed and implementedto obtain correct system operation and maximize the system’s throughputin the presence of faults. The RM has the responsibility of scheduling jobs to availableresources, collecting fault states from resources in the system and performingfault handling tasks, based on fault states. The RM is also employed in multipleexperiments in order to study its behavior in different situations.

This study focuses on the expectations of restaurant managers and perceived attributes of halal certification in Malaysia. Halal certification at restaurants represents the understanding that foods is served according to Islamic dietary laws. Halal means permitted or lawful or fit for consumption. As well as its importance in Muslim countries, the demand for halal food is growing internationally as a result of increasing trade, tourism and globalization. Therefore, halal certification is seen as an important aspect in both the Malaysian and the international restaurant and hospitality industries. Halal certification in an eating premises means that both the restaurants, as well as the entire food supply chain, conform to Islamic dietary rules which do not tolerate contamination by haram (prohibited) materials. Research for this thesis was undertaken by both a mail survey and interviews with restaurant managers. For the survey, a systematic sampling method was applied whereby every fourth restaurant was selected from a list of all restaurants in Malaysia provided by the Companies Commission. A mail survey to 2080 restaurants was administered throughout Malaysia in July 2009. The number of completed and returned questionnaires was 643, indicating a 31% response rate. Data was then entered into a Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for further analysis. The response rate was considered reasonable given the nature of the study and its limitations. In addition, 33 interviews with restaurant managers were conducted in five locations. The results indicate that restaurant managers have high expectations towards halal certification although there are different expectations between Muslim and non-Muslim respondents with respect to attributes such as food safety, hygiene, food quality, marketing aspects and certification issues. It is also gathered that there are significant differences between them with respect to market signals, Islamic attributes, marketing benefits, cost of compliance and local awareness. This thesis concludes that halal certification does yield some benefits in terms of market signals, Islamic attributes and marketing factors while there are also certain issues on cost and compliance that need to be addressed by related local authorities. The findings also indicate that halal restaurant food may have a broader appeal beyond religion and also contributes to Malaysia’s positioning as a tourism destination and a hub for the global halal market.

Among the 44000-plus general managers employed in United States’ hotels in 1993, there were only 100 women, 15 African-Americans, and three African-American women. Additionally, less than 0.5 percent of corporate hospitality managers were women. Given this relative underrepresentation of European-American women and African-Americans, combined with the increasing diversity of hotel clientele and service providers, the purpose of this study is to broaden our understanding of the sources of inequitable occupational outcomes among race-gender groups in hotel management. Two research questions addressed are addressed (1) How are hotel management careers racialized and gendered?; and (2) How are the career experiences of African-American women who are hotel managers different from those of European-American women who are managers? A grounded hermeneutic research approach of joint collection, analysis, and contextualized interpretation of data was used. The data were collected using semistructured interviews with ten African-American women and five European-American iii women who are hotel managers. The constant comparative method of analysis yielded 58 critical difference defining incidents in which the women’s race and gender influenced their career experiences. Further analysis of these incidents yielded four conceptual categories: career stages, relationships, power resources, and human resource management practices. The women’s careers were racialized and gendered through (1) their relationships to European-American men, which (2) provided the women with different resources at each stage of their careers and (3) influenced the way their superiors, who were predominantly European-American men, applied human resource practices. The differences in the career experiences of the women who participated in this study were largely a result of their different positions in relation to European-American men. These relationships to European-American men were significant as the women described these men as “having an inborn advantage in this industry” and as “running things.” In the final chapter, I suggest actions hospitality practitioners, educators, and researchers can take to address several factors identified as contributing to the creation of inequitable career outcomes. / Ph. D.