La programmation concurrente à mémoire partagée est un modèle classique de concurrence qui permet notamment de tirer parti des processeurs multicoeurs aujourd'hui très répandus dans les ordinateurs personnels. Les programmes concurrents sont sujets au problème des interblocages, notoirement difficiles à prévoir et à éliminer, en particulier dans le cas de l'utilisation du mécanisme de synchronisation très populaire que sont les mutex. Dans cette thèse nous avons travaillé à rendre plus aisée la programmation avec des mutex en étudiant des méthodes d'évitement des interblocages. Nous avons d'abord étudié une méthode utilisant une analyse statique par un système de types et d'effets, puis une variante de cette méthode dans un langage à typage dynamique. La seconde méthode est celle que nous avons le plus développée. Elle combine prévention et évitement des interblocages pour fournir une fonction de verrouillage sans interblocages expressive et utilisable. Nous l'avons implémentée sous forme d'une bibliothèque Hop (dialecte de Scheme). Ce faisant, nous avons développé un algorithme sans famine pour l'acquisition simultanée d'un nombre arbitraire de mutex, et identifié le concept d'interblocage asymptotique. Nous avons également été amenés à proposer une optimisation des exceptions (blocs finally). Nos tests de performances semblent indiquer un impact négligeable de l'utilisation de notre bibliothèque sur des applications concurrentes réelles. La majeure partie de notre recherche pourrait être appliquée à d'autres langages de programmation structurée tels que Java. / Shared-memory concurrency is a classic concurrency model which, among other things, makes it possible to take advantage of multicore processors that are now widespread in personal computers. Concurrent programs are prone to deadlocks which are notoriously hard to predict and debug. Programs using mutexes, a very popular synchronization mechanism, are no exception. In this thesis we studied deadlock avoidance methods with the aim of making programming with mutexes easier. We first studied a method that uses a static analysis by means of a type and effect system, then a variation on this method in a dynamically typed language. We developed more the second method. It mixes deadlock prevention and avoidance to provide an easy-to-use and expressive deadlock-free locking function. We implemented it as a Hop (dialect of Scheme) library. This lead us to develop a starvation-free algorithm to simultaneously acquire an arbitrary number of mutexes, and to identify the concept of asymptotic deadlock. While doing so, we also developped an optimization of exceptions(finally blocks). Our performance tests seem to show that using our library has negligible impact on theperformance of real-life applications. Most of our work could be applied to other structured programming languages such as Java.

Humans repeatedly commit the so called “conjunction fallacy”, erroneously judging the probability of two events occurring together as higher than the probability of one of the events. Certain hints have been shown to mitigate this tendency. The present thesis investigated the relations between three psychological factors and performance on conjunction tasks after reading such a hint. The factors represent the understanding of probability and statistics (statistical numeracy), the ability to resist intuitive but incorrect conclusions (cognitive reflection), and the willingness to engage in, and enjoyment of, analytical thinking (need-for-cognition). Participants (n = 50) answered 30 short conjunction tasks and three psychological scales. A bimodal response distribution motivated dichotomization of performance scores. Need-for-cognition was significantly, positively correlated with performance, while numeracy and cognitive reflection were not. The results suggest that the willingness to engage in, and enjoyment of, analytical thinking plays an important role for the capacity to avoid the conjunction fallacy after taking a hint. The hint further seems to neutralize differences in performance otherwise predicted by statistical numeracy and cognitive reflection. / Människor begår ofta det så kallade ”konjuktionsfelslutet”, genom att felaktigt bedöma sannolikheten för sammanträffandet av två händelser som större än sannolikheten för en av händelserna. Vissa typer av ledtrådar har visat sig mildra denna tendens. Denna uppsats undersökte relationerna mellan tre psykologiska faktorer och prestation på konjunktionsuppgifter efter att ha läst en sådan ledtråd. Faktorerna motsvarade förståelsen för sannolikhet och statistik (statistisk räknefärdighet, eng., statistical numeracy), förmågan att motstå intuitiva men felaktiga slutsatser, (kognitiv reflektion, eng., cognitive reflection), samt viljan och lusten till analytiskt tänkande (behov-av-tänkande, eng., need-for-cognition). Deltagare (n = 50) besvarade 30 korta konjunktionsuppgifter och tre psykologiska mätskalor. En bimodal svarsfördelning motiverade dikotomisering av resultaten. Behov-av-tänkande var signifikant, positivt korrelerat med prestation, vilket varken räknefärdighet eller kognitiv reflektion var. Resultaten tyder på att viljan och lusten till analytiskt tänkande spelar en viktig roll i förmågan att undvika konjunktionsfelslutet efter att ha fått en ledtråd. Ledtråden verkar också neutralisera skillnader i prestation som annars uppstår på grund av räknefärdighet och kognitiv reflektion.

Dans les communications coopératives, deux ou plusieurs terminaux de transmissionsont combinés pour accroître la diversité et/ou la puissance des signaux arrivant à un récepteur. Récemment, l'analyse tensorielle s'est avérée une approche efficace pour l'estimation de canaux dans les systèmes coopératifs. Cependant, parmi les quelques travaux consacrés à cette tâche, l'utilisation de la décomposition tensorielle PARAFAC pour modéliser les signaux reçus ne permet pas l'estimation conjointe des symboles et des canaux de communication. Afin d'éviter l'utilisation de séquences de symboles pilotes, l'objectif de cette thèse est de fournir de nouvelles approches tensorielles, en termes de systèmes de transmission et de récepteurs semi-aveugles, pour des systèmes de communication MIMO avec relai mono-directionnels, à deux sauts. Deux systèmes de transmission sont proposés en utilisant un codage spatio-temporel du type Khatri-Rao et deux stratégies de traitement Amplify-and-Forward (AF) au relai. Pour ces systèmes, appelés PT2-AF et NP-AF, les signaux reçus au niveau de la destination satisfont respectivement des modèles tensoriels du type PARATUCK2 et nested PARAFAC. En exploitant les propriétés d'unicité de ces modèles tensoriels établies dans la thèse, plusieurs récepteurs semi-aveugles sont dérivés. Certains de ces récepteurs sont du type ALS, tandis que d'autres sont des solutions non itératives basées sur des factorisations de produits de Khatri-Rao. Des résultats de simulation sont présentés pour illustrer les performances des récepteurs proposés qui sont comparés à des estimateurs supervisés. / In cooperative communication systems, two or more transmitting terminals arecombined to increase the diversity and/or the power of the signals arriving at aparticular receiver. Recently, the so-called tensor analysis has been an efficient approach for channel estimation in systems with cooperative diversity. However, among the few works devoted to this task, the utilization of the PARAFAC tensor decomposition for modeling the received signals did not allow the development of techniques for joint symbol and channel estimation. Aiming to avoid the use of pilot-based sequences, the objective of this thesis is to provide new tensor-based strategies, including transmission systems and semi-blind receivers, for one-way two-hop relaying systems. Based on a Khatri-Rao space-time coding at the source and two different Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relaying strategies, two transmission systems are proposed. For these systems, named PT2-AF and NP-AF, the received signals at the destination node follow respectively a PARATUCK2 and a nested PARAFAC tensor model. Exploiting uniqueness properties of these tensor models which are established in the thesis, several semi-blind receivers are derived. Some of these receivers are of iterative form using an ALS algorithm, whereas some other ones are close-form solutions associated with Khatri-Rao factorizations. Some simulation results are finally presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed receivers which are compared to some state-of-the-art supervised techniques.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Protein fold recognition is an important task in the biological area. Different machine learning methods such as multiclass classifiers, one-vs-all and ensemble nested dichotomies were applied to this task and, in most of the cases, multiclass approaches were used. In this paper, we compare classifiers organized in tree structures to classify folds. We used a benchmark dataset containing 125 features to predict folds, comparing different supervised methods and achieving 54% of accuracy. An approach related to tree-structure of classifiers obtained better results in comparison with a hierarchical approach. / Revisión por pares

This study aims to identify and explain relationships between some major factors associated with successful reading at Grade 5 level in South African primary schools. In South Africa, grave concerns with regards to low levels of student achievement pervade research initiatives and educational debates. Despite considerable investments in educational inputs (such as policy and resources) and processes (such as curriculum provision and teacher support), outcomes (such as student achievement) remain disappointingly low. The South African population is characterized by great diversity and variation. With 11 official languages, current educational policy in South Africa advocates an additive bilingualism model and students in Grade 1 to 3 are taught in their mother tongue. Thereafter, when these students progress to Grade 4, the language of learning and teaching changes to a second language, which in most cases is English. At this key developmental stage students are also expected to advance from learning to read to a stage where they can use reading in order to learn. With this complexity of issues in mind, Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was used to determine the effect of a number of explanatory variables at learner and school level on reading achievement as outcome variable, while controlling for language using the South African Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 data. As an international comparative evaluation of reading literacy involving more than 40 countries, PIRLS 2006 was the second, after PIRLS 2001, in a series of planned five-year cycles of assessment to measure trends in children’s reading literacy achievement, policy and practices related to literacy. Grade 5 learners in South African primary schools who participated in PIRLS 2006 were not able to achieve satisfactory levels of reading competence. The gravity of this finding is exacerbated by the fact that these learners were tested in the language in which they had been receiving instruction during the Foundation Phase of schooling. This study found most significant factors associated with reading literacy at learner-level, but this does not mean that the existence of teacher- and school-level factors is not of importance. While some explanatory factors at learner-level can more easily become the target of reading interventions, the higher level effect of the classroom and school are not diminished by this study. Creemers’ Comprehensive Model of Educational Effectiveness was utilized as theoretical point of departure. Creemers’ model was adapted for the purposes of this study to reflect a South African model of reading effectiveness in contrast with Creemers’ original use of it as a model of school effectiveness. Evidence was provided that the conceptual framework was inadequate in identifying factors affecting reading achievement for all South African language groupings. More specifically, the adapted South African reading effectiveness model was only appropriate in explaining reading achievement scores for the Afrikaans and English language groupings than for those from African language groupings. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / unrestricted

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Mit Hilfe der Technik des Automatischen Differenzierens (AD) lassen sich für Funktionen, die als Programmquellcode gegeben sind, Ableitungsinformationen rechentechnisch effizient und mit geringem Aufwand für den Nutzer bereitstellen. Eine Variante der Implementierung von AD basiert auf der Überladung von Operatoren und Funktionen, die von vielen modernen Programmiersprachen ermöglicht wird. Durch Ausnutzung des Konzepts der Überladung wird eine interne Funktions-Repräsentation (Tape) generiert, die anschließend für die Ableitungsberechnung herangezogen wird. In der Dissertation werden neue Techniken erarbeitet, die eine effizientere Tape-Erstellung und die parallele Tape-Auswertung ermöglichen. Anhand von Laufzeituntersuchungen für numerische Beispiele werden die Möglichkeiten der neuen Techniken verdeutlicht. / Using the technique of Automatic Differentiation (AD), derivative information can be computed efficiently for any function that is given as source code in a supported programming languages. One basic implementation strategy is based on the concept of operator overloading that is available for many programming languages. Due the overloading of operators, an internal representation of the function can be generated at runtime. This so-called tape can then be used for computing derivatives. In the thesis, new techniques are introduced that allow a more efficient tape creation and the parallel evaluation of tapes. Advantages of the new techniques are demonstrated by means of runtime analyses for numerical examples.

Estimating large covariance matrices from small samples is an important problem in many fields. Among others, this includes spatial statistics and data assimilation. In this thesis, we deal with several methods of covariance estimation with emphasis on regula- rization and covariance models useful in filtering problems. We prove several properties of estimators and propose a new filtering method. After a brief summary of basic esti- mating methods used in data assimilation, the attention is shifted to covariance models. We show a distinct type of hierarchy in nested models applied to the spectral diagonal covariance matrix: explicit estimators of parameters are computed by the maximum like- lihood method and asymptotic variance of these estimators is shown to decrease when the maximization is restricted to a subspace that contains the true parameter value. A similar result is obtained for general M-estimators. For more complex covariance mo- dels, maximum likelihood method cannot provide explicit parameter estimates. In the case of a linear model for a precision matrix, however, consistent estimator in a closed form can be computed by the score matching method. Modelling of the precision ma- trix is particularly beneficial in Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRF), which possess a sparse precision matrix. The...

A new method for the determination of finely-gridded reservoir simulation pressures has been developed. It is estimated to be as much as hundreds to thousands of times faster than other methods for very large reservoir simulation grids. The method extends the work of Weber et al. Weber demonstrated accuracies for the pressure solution normally requiring millions of cells using traditional finite-difference equations with only hundreds of cells. This was accomplished through the use of finite-difference equations that incorporate the physics of the flow. Although these coarse-grid solutions achieve accuracies normally requiring orders of magnitude more resolution, their coarse resolution does not resolve local pressure variations resulting from fine-grid permeability variations. Many oil reservoir simulation models require fine grids to adequately represent the reservoir properties. Weber's coarse grids are of little value. This study takes advantage of the accurate coarse-grid solutions of Weber, by nesting them in the requisite fine grids to achieve much faster solutions of the large systems. Application of the nested-grid method involved calculating an accurate solution on a coarse grid, nesting the coarse-grid solution as fixed points into a finer grid and solving. Best results were obtained when an optimal number of coarse-grid pressure points were nested into the fine grid and when an optimal number of nested-grid systems were used.

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