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Scheduling is concerned with the process of deciding how to commit resources between a variety of possible tasks with the aim of optimizing some performance criterion. Efficient scheduling is a vital tool in successful decision-making. To date, an enormous amount of research has been done on scheduling problems arising from various disciplines. Major attention has so far been dedicated to off-line (usually deterministic) scheduling problems. Off-line deterministic scheduling deals with perfect information. That is, all information with regard to a problem is known prior to any decision. However, this perfect information assumption violates the nature of many realistic issues with uncertainties, for example, a situation where the knowledge of problem instances is revealed over time, or a scenario in which processing tasks are temporarily disrupted or cancelled. To better formulate this sort of problem with high uncertainties, a new concept of on-line scheduling was introduced. On-line approaches have become increasingly important and are frequently encountered when only partial knowledge is available but instant or very fast solution methods are required and should nevertheless result in good outcomes. In on-line scheduling, a decision maker allocates resources between tasks as the information is gradually released. Obviously, given the same scheduling environment and problem instance, the result produced by an on-line scheduler cannot be better than that by the optimal off-line scheduler; but the on-line scheduling technique immunizes schedules from future disruptions and uncertainties. / This thesis extends the study of some scheduling problems derived from various industrial and computing situations to on-line scheduling environments, specifically the on-line-list and the on-line-time paradigms. The six topics studied are classified in two parts in this thesis. Part I consists of three machine scheduling problems taking into account various types of setup considerations. Part II includes the other three scheduling problems which are closely related to issues arising in the management of shipping containers and wind energy. / The effort is focused on constructing effective and efficient (on-line) decision-making strategies with the purpose of optimizing certain objective measures in those uncertain scheduling environments. The performance of the proposed heuristics as well as some existing on-line algorithms is evaluated and compared via competitive analysis. For some cases, empirical studies are also carried out to assess their average performance.

Thesis (MA (Theology)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-141)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 1963. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-56). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Bibliography: leaves 84-99.

<p>This study aims to connect problem-based learning with the problematic aspects during English lessons in school. In this way, suggestions for solutions to these problems could be generated. The study took place at an upper secondary school located in the middle regions of Sweden. In this school six unstructured observations were done during the English lessons in order to locate the problematic aspects. The students who participated in this study were in the ages of sixteen to eighteen years old. The theoretical framework was based on literature on problem-based learning and learning in general. The essential features of problem-based learning have been summarized and connected with the problematic aspects and classroom activities from the observations. In this way, it has been possible to come up with suggestions for solutions to some problems, such as unwillingness to speak and lack of motivation among students. The conclusions in this essay are that the problematic aspects dealt with features, such as unwillingness to speak as well as that the students did not understand the learning materials and that the teacher was not supportive. The solutions for these problems dealt mostly with triggering motivation by presenting problem-solving tasks, working with interaction and metacognition and planning the tasks in accordance with the students’ zone of proximal development. Furthermore, the teacher should work as a guide in the classroom to help the students along the way. The students should also receive positive and constructive feedback from the teacher, which will improve the learning among the students.</p>

<p>To collect data for this report a field study was performed at an orphanage in Cape Town, South Africa. I carried out volunteer work for eight weeks to find out more about the children’s situations. I wanted to find out what it was like to work at an orphanage for children in need and what the employees were doing to help. The children’s ages ranged from five to eighteen years old and they all lived together, although boys and girls slept in different rooms. </p><p>Before I went to South Africa, I thought that an orphanage was a place for children without parents, who had been abandoned when they where infants. Some of the children at the orphanage come from situations like this, but many of them have family who they need help and protection from. Their own parents cannot take care of them because of different social problems such as sexual abuse, drug abuse or poverty. </p><p>During the field study qualitative research was performed, where the people that I worked with and the children in the orphanage were participating. Observation was also included in my field work. The result of the field study was very interesting. The most important findings from my results were that all of the people I spoke to said that they would like to see some changes at the orphanage. They came up with plenty of different ideas to make the environment better. I interviewed five employees at the orphanage and all of them said that they would like to extend the amount of employees, have better communication among themselves, therapy sessions - and more weekend activities for the children. During this period of the field study I interviewed a lot of children of different ages, but out of the interviews six where used in this report.</p>

Constrained graph problems are about finding graphs respecting a given set of constraints. These problems occur in many areas. For example, security properties, biological reaction mechanisms, ecological predator/prey relationships, compiler code optimizations, and logic circuit fault diagnosis are just a few of the areas in which graph constraints play an important role. This thesis proposes a constraint programming approach for solving these problems. We present new constraints defined on top of the notions of domination and transitive closure, and their search algorithms. We have implemented these constraints in the state-of-the-art Gecode system and shown that they are competitive with or better than other approaches in realistic scenarios. / Les problèmes de graphes contraints concernent la recherche de graphes qui respectent un ensemble donné de contraintes. Ils apparaissent dans de nombreux domaines. Par exemple, la sécurité dans les logiciels, les méchanismes des réactions biologiques, les relations prédateur/proie en écologie, l'optimisation de code par les compilateurs, et le diagnostic de pannes dans des circuits logiques sont quelques-uns des domaines dans lesquels les contraintes de graphes jouent un rôle important. Cette thèse propose une approche basée sur la programmation par contraintes pour résoudre ces problèmes. Nous présentons de nouvelles contraintes définies sur les notions de domination et de clôture transitive, ainsi que leurs algorithmes de recherche. Nous avons implémenté ces contraintes dans le système de pointe Gecode, et avons montré notre approche compétitive et parfois meilleure que d'autres approches dans des cas réalistes.

In this study, behavioral (post-error response time) and electrophysiological (ERN amplitude and latency) indices of error-monitoring were examined in individuals with autism and typical development. Participants were presented with a series of faces, and they were asked to quickly and accurately determine the gender or the affect of the faces. Younger participants showed post-error slowing for the Gender Task, while older participants showed post-error slowing for the Affect Task. With age, participants showed a greater differentiation between correct and incorrect responses on both ERN amplitude and ERN latency. For the Gender Task only, participants with typical development showed a greater differentiation between correct and incorrect responses than participants with autism on ERN amplitude. Evidence of more error monitoring on the Affect Task was associated with less autistic symptomology, fewer internalizing problems, and better social skills. Evidence of more error monitoring on the Gender Task was associated with greater autistic symptomology and fewer internalizing problems. Overall, age, regardless of diagnostic group, had a substantial effect on face processing and error monitoring abilities. Individuals with autism showed an ability to engage in error monitoring, with only mild impairments in error monitoring. The data suggest that error monitoring is not a core deficit of autism; however, individual differences in error monitoring may significantly moderate the expression of autism.