Web services are a form of distributed computing. As applications accessible over standard internet protocols, web services allow access to disparate computational resources. Recently, with an increased commoditization of web services, there has been a greater interest in the problem of selection. If a web service client can be configured to use one of a number of different web services, which should it select? In this thesis, an approach based on examining the past quality of service (QoS) parameters of similar clients is presented. Standard web service clients are augmented to report their experiences, and can reason over both these and the experiences of others using a number of formal techniques, thereby arriving at an informed decision.

There are many occupational and professional careers that demand performance at the highest levels of function possible in hot environments. During heat exposure, the body undergoes a battery of physiological changes in response high heat stress. A problem arises when current physiological strain models are applied towards instantaneous monitoring of physiological strain in field settings. The Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism has developed a novel equation to assess physiological strain, coined the Physiological Strain Scale (PSS), using the metrics of skin temperature (chest) and heart rate. This purpose of this study was to validate the new equations through previously collected data from 2 field studies (N=29, N=12), which varied in workload (Firefighting duties vs. Controlled Wattage Ride) , intensity, and environmental conditions (WLFF: 27.4 °C ± 3.61 °C and 6.5 mph ± 3.0 mph vs. Cycling: 12.5°C ± 7.1°C and 6.2 mph ± 5.7 mph). Core temperature, skin temperature (chest), and heart rate were continuously monitored in both studies. Accuracy was assessed between the gold standard PSI and the novel PSS equation by a 2 x 5 ANOVA between the number of overall minutes spent in the following groupings: No/Little= <2, Low=2.1-4, Moderate= 4.1-6, High= 6.1-8, Very high= >8. The novel equation of PSS demonstrated accuracy and reliability in the higher ambient temperature, lower wind speed environment when compared to PSI. However, PSS measured physiological strain to be significantly less in the lower temperature, higher wind speed environment when compared to PSI. This data suggests PSS is reliable in environments with a low Tcore-Tskin gradient, but may need adjustment in environments with a large Tcore-Tskin gradient.

Mobile browsers are known to be slow. We characterize the performance of mobile browsers and find out that resource loading is the bottleneck. Leveraging an unprecedented set of web usage data collected from 24 iPhone users continuously over one year, we examine the three fundamental, orthogonal approaches to improve resource loading without infrastructure support: caching, prefetching, and speculative loading, which is first proposed and studied in this work. Speculative loading predicts and speculatively loads the subresources needed to open a webpage once its URL is given. We show that while caching and prefetching are highly limited for mobile browsing, speculative loading can be significantly more effective. Empirically, we show that client-only solutions can improve the browser speed by 1.4 seconds on average. We also report the design, realization, and evaluation of speculative loading in a WebKit-based browser called Tempo. On average, Tempo can reduce browser delay by 1 second (~20%).

In this thesis, I examine the relationship between deafness, women, and performance in Mark Medoff's Children of a Lesser God. The play was a massive popular success, both in its run on Broadway and its movie adaptation. Deafness and deaf people had never been so visible in American hearing culture. More importantly, the play coincided with civil rights movements by people with disabilities, which culminated in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disabilities, including deafness, were called into being as part of a national identity. These movements posited self-determination but ultimately relied and thrived on a communal and relational sense of identity. I argue that the play challenges individualistic modes of identification through its protagonist, Sarah, a deaf woman whose "voice" is always translated through the audience. The play overtly and politically calls for a reconceptualization of American identity along the lines of deaf or disability and female identity theories, which typically value community and interdependence over individualism. Moreover, the genre amplifies this call for community. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / English / MA; / Thesis;

The biggest field in the recent decade in software development has been a subject known as Agile Development. In Agile development the construction of the software is an iterative process and is done with close contact with the costumer. One of the most well-known agile methods is Extreme Programming, which suggests a number of practices to develop software. One of those practices is test-Driven Development, which is the writing of the test code before you write the actual code. This means that one can test the code after it is finished. This creates an opportunity to change the design of the code and then test it again with your test code and discover if any functionality has been lost. The purpose of refactoring is the improvement of the design of existing code. How refactoring affects the performance is not widely discussed and therefore this thesis is going to examine that field. Code examples with and without refactoring principles have been tested. The investigation has been divided into two parts, part one tests individual refactoring principles and part two tests a test application. There are many opinions how to interpret the results of a performance test. After an extensive investigation the arithmetic mean was chosen, mainly because it reflects the total runtime for a series of executions. To test the hypothesis that total execution time will change with refactoring the Students t-test was used. It was chosen because it can be applied even when the variance is unknown. The results were clear, the arithmetic mean increased in five out of six refactoring principles. The test application also increased, but with only 4 %. The reason for the small increase was that it is not possible to go from a non refactored application to a fully refactored application. Another reason is that is was developed with Swedish Rail Administration’s framework which of course was not refactored. The conclusion of this thesis was that one should be careful with refactoring the parts of the code that is executed the most. One should have the “90-10 rule” in mind, it states that 90 % of the execution time is done in 10 % of the code. Another important aspect is that very often is an existing framework used, if you only refactor the new code and not the framework it leads to that only a subset of the code is being refactored. This means that the application does not get fully refactored and therefore the consequences of the refactoring mitigates.

The introduction of a new technology High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) in the Release 5 of the 3GPP specifications raises the question about its performance capabilities. HSDPA is a promising technology which gives theoretical rates up to 14.4 Mbits. The main objective of this thesis is to discuss the system level performance of HSDPAMainly the thesis exploration focuses on the Packet Scheduler because it is the central entity of the HSDPA design. Due to its function, the Packet Scheduler has a direct impact on the HSDPA system performance. Similarly, it also determines the end user performance, and more specifically the relative performance between the users in the cell.The thesis analyzes several Packet Scheduling algorithms that can optimize the trade-off between system capacity and end user performance for the traffic classes targeted in this thesis.The performance evaluation of the algorithms in the HSDPA system are carried out under computer aided simulations that are assessed under realistic conditions to predict the results as precise on the algorithms efficiency. The simulation of the HSDPA system and the algorithms are coded in C/C++ language

Denna uppsats har frågeställningen: Vilka problem kan uppstå vid en nedbrytning från strategin till operationella nyckeltal och vad kan göras för att undvika dem?Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur en nedbrytning av strategin till operationella nyckeltal går till. Framtagningen av nyckeltal ska leda till en identifiering av vilka problem som kan uppstå i denna nedbrytning samt förslag på hur de kan undvikas. Studien ska även ha till syfte att designa nyckeltal som underlättar för en uppföljning och för att besvara vad personalen ska göra för att förbättra talet, det vill säga en kommunikation nedifrån och upp och vice versa. För att genomföra denna studie har empirisk data hämtats från Carlsberg Sverige AB (CSAB) där den operationella leveransplaneringsavdelningen idag står utan nyckeltal.

SourceURL:file:///Users/sofiahultin/Desktop/AMDex/Summary%20of%20essay.doc I my essay I describe my master project Alla måste duscha – en gympasalsredovisning/ Everyone has to shower – a school gym presentation. Through my work I investigate possibilities for action and agency in a limiting space; the gymnasium. With the help of Mika Hannulas book Politics, Identity and Public Space: Critical Reflections in and through the Practices of Contemporary Art, I discuss how the stories I tell trough my project can be seen as suggestions for a possible reality. By adding my stories to the old ones (that create our society) I hope they, if only just the slightest, can influence on how we look at reality and on a possible reality.                                   In my essay I describe how the school gym and the gym class is characterized by a scientific way of looking at students, the human body and education and that this clashes with the complexity of us as humans. I describe how norms for sex and gender become very distinct during gym class, because of the students vulnerability, and how that can create an unsafe space for them. Even though it’s often not their intention, students who break these norms become political because they show us that the norms are not stabile. With their presence, they question the ways that they and their classmates have been taught to behave.                       In my master project, “the little girl” is very present. In the essay I explain how I through my master project, aim to create a more complex image of who this person can be. I describe her as “the little girl” because I think that we are used to see this person as mainly her gender and her littleness/harmlessness. Not dividing the characters actions into either good or bad is also an important part of my work. Instead I try to focus on the characters actions as ways of surviving, or ways of using loopholes in power structures, as a way of getting around a lack of symbolic capital. I have also looked at the word manipulation and tried to see if it could be seen as a positive and creative feature and as a way to these loopholes.                       I have also talked about the possibility of being political without using classic patriarchal attributes such as strength and certainty, through the text Vi vill inte, vi kan inte, vi törs inte/We don’t want, we can’t, we don’t dare. This way of looking as uncertainty, as something positive, was something that I discussed with Håkan Larsson, a professor at The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. During my interview with him we discussed this as a counterweight to the sports contexts noncomplex view on people. To strive towards this uncertainty in my work might be the most political I can do.

Web services are a form of distributed computing. As applications accessible over standard internet protocols, web services allow access to disparate computational resources. Recently, with an increased commoditization of web services, there has been a greater interest in the problem of selection. If a web service client can be configured to use one of a number of different web services, which should it select? In this thesis, an approach based on examining the past quality of service (QoS) parameters of similar clients is presented. Standard web service clients are augmented to report their experiences, and can reason over both these and the experiences of others using a number of formal techniques, thereby arriving at an informed decision.

The Chinese term “Guanxi” literally refers to interpersonal relationships which have aroused growing interests among researchers and business practitioners. Common research interests are mainly centered on theoretical study and model building instead of applying them to business practices while this paper is aimed to investigate how business Guanxi works from a practical view, and in particular how business Guanxi affects the performance of small and medium-sized Chinese construction companies. Three independent managers in different regions are chosen as the initiating point to explore how Guanxi works by tracing back their inter-connectivity as well as interactions among different stakeholders. The empirical findings indicate business Guanxi acts as an important source of information and the efficient way to seek financial and technical support, to increase market shares and reduce risks, has a positive effect on to the performance of small and medium-sized Chinese construction firms. Based on the empirical findings, it is further argued that a good business Guanxi is likely to create competitive advantages in supporting Tsang’s arguments. Finally a managerial implication is provided which tries to remind practitioners that business Guanxi is a necessary factor for the survival of Chinese construction enterprises but it is not sufficient. Managers should not solely rely on Guanxi even if two parties have high quality of connections, and the institutional tools are needed in order to secure the health of Guanxi.