This master’s thesis deals with the topic of program source code compilation for RISC-V processor architecture. The generated object files need to be compatible with GNU binutils open source tools which are already available for the architecture. The focus is on relocations which must be correctly detected in Codasip Studio tools and transformed into RISC-V platform specific relocation types.

Thesis advisor: Sara Cordes / Thesis advisor: Ellen Winner / Evidence suggests that humans and non-human animals have access to two distinct numerical representation systems: a precise "object-file" system used to visually track small quantities (<4) and an approximate, ratio-dependent analog magnitude system used to represent all natural numbers. Although many studies to date indicate that infants can discriminate exclusively small sets (e.g., 1 vs. 2, 2 vs. 3) or exclusively large sets (4 vs. 8, 8 vs. 16), a robust phenomenon exists whereby they fail to compare sets crossing this small-large boundary (2 vs. 4, 3 vs. 6) despite a seemingly favorable ratio of difference between the two set sizes. Despite these robust failures in infancy (up to 14 months), studies suggest that 3-year old children no longer encounter difficulties comparing small from large sets, yet little work has explored the development of this phenomenon between 14 months and 3 years of age. The present study investigates (1) when in development infants naturally overcome this inability to compare small vs. large sets, as well as (2) what factors may facilitate this ability: namely, perceptual variability and/or numerical language. Results from three cross-sectional studies indicate that infants begin to discriminate between small and large sets as early as 17 months of age. Furthermore, infants seemed to benefit from perceptual variability of the items in the set when making these discriminations. Moreover, although preliminary evidence suggests that a child's ability to verbally count may correlate with success on these discriminations, simply exposure to numerical language (in the form of adult modeling of labeling the cardinality and counting the set) does not affect performance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

3D printing applications have achieved increased success as an additive manufacturing (AM) process. Micro-structure of mechanical/biological materials present design challenges owing to the resolution of 3D printers and material properties/composition. Biological materials are complex in structure and composition. Efforts have been made by 3D printer manufacturers to provide materials with varying physical, mechanical and chemical properties, to handle simple to complex applications. As 3D printing is finding more medical applications, we expect future uses in areas such as hip replacement - where smoothness of the femoral head is important to reduce friction that can cause a lot of pain to a patient. The issue of print resolution plays a vital role due to staircase effect. In some practical applications where 3D printing is intended to produce replacement parts with joints with movable parts, low resolution printing results in fused joints when the joint clearance is intended to be very small. Various 3D printers are capable of print resolutions of up to 600dpi (dots per inch) as quoted in their datasheets. Although the above quoted level of detail can satisfy the micro-structure needs of a large set of biological/mechanical models under investigation, it is important to include the ability of a 3D slicing application to check that the printer can properly produce the feature with the smallest detail in a model. A way to perform this check would be the physical measurement of printed parts and comparison to expected results. Our work includes a method for using ray casting to detect features in the 3D CAD models whose sizes are below the minimum allowed by the printer resolution. The resolution validation method is tested using a few simple and complex 3D models. Our proposed method serves two purposes: (a) to assist CAD model designers in developing models whose printability is assured. This is achieved by warning or preventing the designer when they are about to perform shape operations that will lead to regions/features with sizes lower than that of the printer resolution; (b) to validate slicing outputs before generation of G-Codes to identify regions/features with sizes lower than the printer resolution.