The primary objective of this master’s thesis is to discuss a design and development of proximity touch control panel, which contains two simulated buttons and one rotary slider simulating functions of the potentiometer using specialized sensor controllers. The first part is describing functions and different technologies used to create touch sensors. It also introduces its usage in practice, advantages and disadvantages of different technologies which provides the readers with basic theoretical knowledge and introduction into the touch sensors. The second part as follows describes the definition of Integrated Circuits MPR083 and MPR084, outline of the features and methods of their functions. Displays internal connection of these circuits and describes forms of the serial communication with microcontroller connected to I2C bus. In these part there are in details described individual internal registers of these Integrated Circuits and theirs typical setups. It shows how it is possible to use the external interrupts and examples of their practical application. In the last chapter of these thesis is described the layout of the individual modules and construction of the whole designed device. The work is introducing two different concepts of programming the microcontrollers and consequently also construction of the appropriate ISP and JTAG programmers. It also introduces construction of the display units for visual feedback with the user and approach of the communication for the control LED matrix and graphical LCD display. The main part of this thesis is the construction of the control circuit, which includes key part, microcontroller ATmega16. It also presents the description of the program written in development environment AVR Studio in programming language C and his specific functions. In conclusion of the thesis are listed real measured behavior of the communication on I2C bus and their description.

This thesis deals with the treatment of chronic pain by using neuromodulation, where a external generator is used in a trial period. In the first section the principle of pain management is described and then the main nature of neuromodulation. The possibilities of chronic pain suppression are described, where we are mainly dealing with neurostimulation (stimulation with electric current). For better understanding, examples of neurostimulation usage are shown, where and in what problems it is used. Because this work deals with an external generator for a trial period (a trial system), the possibilities of testing electric impulses are described, which are then used in a implantable generator IPG. The requirements for such a external generator are also described, which are important for the design of such a device. The design of the device is firstly modeled by a block scheme, where function of the separate blocks is described and afterwards, the entire design of the external generator for neuromodulation is given. The test sample of the external generator is manufactured and tested.

The aim of this thesis is to design and implement an industrial programmer AVR microcontrollers from Atmel. The first section provides the theoretical knowledge of the AVR microcontroller. Furthermore, comparison of methods for programming the microcontroller and the selected method is an analysis of the speed of programming. The following is the entire design of industrial programmer which is implemented in the programming environment Eagle. In the penultimate part of the proposal is designed PCB. The final section is devoted to the revival of the programmer and programming.

Data for empirical studies of software engineering can be difficult to obtain. Extrapolations from small controlled experiments to large development environments are tenuous and observation tends to change the behavior of the subjects. In this thesis we propose the use of data gathered from software repositories in observational studies of software engineering. We present tools we have developed to extract data from CVS repositories and the SourceForge Research Archive. We use these tools to gather data from 9,999 Open Source projects. By analyzing these data we are able to provide insights into the structure of Open Source projects. For example, we find that the vast majority of the projects studied have never had more than three contributors and that the vast majority of authors studied have never contributed to more than one project. However, there are projects that have had up to 120 contributors in a single year and authors who have contributed to more than 20 projects which raises interesting questions about team dynamics in the Open Source community. We also use these data to empirically test the belief that productivity is constant in terms of lines of code per programmer per year regardless of the programming language used. We find that yearly programmer productivity is not constant across programming languages, but rather that developers using higher level languages tend to write fewer lines of code per year than those using lower level languages.

The object-oriented paradigm is widely advocated and has been used in South African universities since the late 1990s. Object-oriented computer programming is based on the object-oriented paradigm where objects are the building blocks that combine data and methods in the same entity. Students' performance in object-oriented programming (OOP) is a matter of concern. In many cases they lack the ability to apply various supportive techniques in the process of programming. Efficient knowledge, skills and strategies are required during problem solving to enhance the programming process. It is often assumed that students implicitly and independently master these high-level knowledge, skills and strategies, and that teaching should focus on programming content and coding structures only. However, to be successful in the complex domain of OOP, explicit learning of both programming and supportive cognitive techniques is required. The objective of this study was to identify cognitive, metacognitive and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies used by successful and unsuccessful programmers in OOP. These activities were identified and evaluated in an empirical research study. A mixed research design was used, where both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to analyse participants' data. As a qualitative research practice, grounded theory was applied to guide the systematic collection of data and to generate theory. The findings suggest that successful programmers applied significantly more cognitive-, metacognitive- and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies, also using a greater variety, than the unsuccessful programmers. Since programming is complex, we propose a learning repertoire based on the approaches of successful programmers, to serve as an integrated framework to support novices in learning OOP. Various techniques should be used during problem solving and programming to meaningfully construct, explicitly reflect on, and critically select appropriate knowledge, skills and strategies so as to better understand, design, code and test programs. Some examples of teaching practices are also outlined as application of the findings of the study. / Mathematical Sciences / PhD. (Nathematics, Science and Tecnical Education)

The object-oriented paradigm is widely advocated and has been used in South African universities since the late 1990s. Object-oriented computer programming is based on the object-oriented paradigm where objects are the building blocks that combine data and methods in the same entity. Students' performance in object-oriented programming (OOP) is a matter of concern. In many cases they lack the ability to apply various supportive techniques in the process of programming. Efficient knowledge, skills and strategies are required during problem solving to enhance the programming process. It is often assumed that students implicitly and independently master these high-level knowledge, skills and strategies, and that teaching should focus on programming content and coding structures only. However, to be successful in the complex domain of OOP, explicit learning of both programming and supportive cognitive techniques is required. The objective of this study was to identify cognitive, metacognitive and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies used by successful and unsuccessful programmers in OOP. These activities were identified and evaluated in an empirical research study. A mixed research design was used, where both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to analyse participants' data. As a qualitative research practice, grounded theory was applied to guide the systematic collection of data and to generate theory. The findings suggest that successful programmers applied significantly more cognitive-, metacognitive- and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies, also using a greater variety, than the unsuccessful programmers. Since programming is complex, we propose a learning repertoire based on the approaches of successful programmers, to serve as an integrated framework to support novices in learning OOP. Various techniques should be used during problem solving and programming to meaningfully construct, explicitly reflect on, and critically select appropriate knowledge, skills and strategies so as to better understand, design, code and test programs. Some examples of teaching practices are also outlined as application of the findings of the study. / Mathematical Sciences / PhD. (Nathematics, Science and Tecnical Education)

The conception of electrospinning can trace its roots back more than 400 years, when it was observed that rubbed amber can deform a droplet of water on a smooth surface, and is based upon simple concepts of charge separation and surface tension. Since that time, considerable effort has been directed at both the cause and utility of this phenomenon. The specific aim of this dissertation project was to develop an automated electrostatic processing apparatus that was capable of controlling the three-dimensional architecture of an electrospun scaffold to further improve its utility in tissue engineering. The efficacy of using this technique has been well documented and can be adapted to produce tissue engineering scaffolds for a variety of tissues and organs. This apparatus incorporates precise mandrel motion. The system is capable of 0 - 5000 revolution per minute rotation, 0 - 25 inch per second translation and ± 40° rotation about the electrospinning jet axis for repeatable scaffold production. Fiber alignment and scaffold density are precisely controlled by rotating a mandrel along one axis, translation along that same axis, and rotation around the second axis perpendicular to the electrospun fiber stream. The control is accomplished with a PC based "supervisory" control program written partially in the LabVIEW® programming language and partially in SI Programmer supplied by Applied Motion Products. Scaffold thickness and fiber diameters are determined by the syringe metering pump flow rate, material being electrospun and solution concentrations. Through extensive laboratory analysis (mechanical testing and both optical and electron microscopy), parameters such as fiber orientation, diameter and mechanics can be predictive from specific polymer setups. Our laboratory has demonstrated the ability to electrospin natural and synthetic polymers and this apparatus will be utilized to tailor scaffolds to meet specific tissue engineering needs by creating a truly biomimicking scaffold / extracellular matrix.

Data Prefetching is a well-known technique to speed up applications wherein hardware prefetchers or compilers speculatively prefetch data into caches closer to the processor to ensure it’s readily available when the processor demands it. Since incorrect speculation leads to prefetching useless data which, in turn, results in wasting memory bandwidth and polluting caches, prefetch mechanisms are usually conservative and prefetch on spotting fairly regular access patterns only. This gives the programmer with a knowledge of application, an opportunity to insert fine-grain software prefetches in the code to clinically prefetch the data that is certain to be demanded but whose access pattern is not too obvious for hardware prefetchers or compiler to detect. In this study, the author demonstrates the performance improvement obtained by such programmer-inserted prefetches with the case study of an FMM (Fast Multipole Method) VList application kernel run with several different configurations. The VList computation requires computing the Hadamard product of matrices. However, the way each node of the octree is stored in the memory, leads to indirect accessing of elements where memory accesses themselves are not sequential but the pointers pointing to those memory locations are still stored sequentially. Since compilers do not insert prefetches for indirect accesses, and to hardware, the access pattern appears random, programmer-inserted prefetching is the only solution for such a case. The author demonstrates the performance gain obtained by employing different prefetching choices in terms of what all structures in the code to prefetch and which level of cache to prefetch those to and also presents an analysis of the impact of different configuration parameters on performance gain. The author shows that there are several prefetching combinations which always bring performance gain without ever hurting the performance, and also identifies prefetching to L1 cache and prefetching all data structures in question, as the best prefetching recommendation for this application kernel. It is shown that this one combination gets the highest performance gain for most run configurations and an average performance gain of 10.14% across all run configurations. / text

Subjects were 32 computer programmers employed in a large computerized tax-processing company in the Southwest. Ratings of each programmer's job performance by his/her immediate supervisor and scores on the Aptitude Test for Programmer Personnel (ATPP) were obtained. Relationships between test scores and criteria were examined to identify significant (p < .05) correlations. Statistical treatment of data included zero-order Pearson product-moment correlation, multiple linear regression, and first-order semi-partial correlation analyses. Results indicated that the ATPP did not successfully predict (2 >.05) the rated performance of the programmers.

Subjects were 34 computer programmers employed in a major computerized tax processing company. Scores in the Computer Programmer Aptitude Battery (CPAB) and ratings of each programmer's job performance by his immediate supervisor were obtained. The purpose of the study was to validate a selection test. The relationship between the aptitude battery and performance evaluations was examined to evaluate the test's ability in predicting programming performance. Statistical treatment of data included Pearson product-moment correlations and a multiple linear regression analysis. The total test scores and several of the subtests were found to be significantly correlated with performance.