The domain of this research are CASE tools, designated for requirements engineering, which are able to generate computerized information system prototypes. The main goal of this project is to design software, which would enable to generate an IS prototype from requirements specification, created re specification method, suggested by the Information Systems department. The software is a part of a CASE tool, designed by the IS department. The CASE tool is designated for creating requirements specification and the software will provide additional functionality to it. The opportunities of computerized IS prototyping using Oracle Designer, Visual FoxPro and MS Access were analyzed. In case of Oracle Designer, in order to create a computerized IS prototype we have to go through the whole design stage. In case of DBMS Visual FoxPro and MS Access we must have a database designed. And the software for generating computerized IS prototype enables you to generate a system prototype at an early design stage and without having the system project.

The project is designed for an actual software area nowadays – automation solutions for conference organization. The product, developed with Java Tapestry technology is a web-based application with document, content management, publication, and conference organization process. The software for web systems is effective when developers have easy way to make software changes or upgrades. Tapestry framework allows software creation with the good separation between presentation and data exchange levels. This solution allows creating prototype for all customers, and adding special customer’s defined functions very simply. The project goal was to improve Tapestry functionality and ability for web applications, and create a web portal framework with content management, document management and users rights management subsystems in it. The design, problems, results and project realization are fully described in this document.

Submitted in fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Technology: Business Administration, Durban University of Technology, 2014 / Universities are seen to be facing a turbulent storm of challenges, demands, environmental changes, and facilitated thrust in the midst of economic meltdown. The environments in which these institutions are operating are becoming increasingly tempestuous, and competitive which makes leadership crucial as they continuously interface with the local and wider environments. At its best leadership is proximate, contextual and distributed especially in the case of complex organisations like universities. Changes and institutional mergers that took place worldwide two decades ago diffused to the south of Africa as well. These mergers resulted in the formation of mega universities and universities with satellite or branch campuses. If the trend continues with branch campuses spreading even into foreign countries, it will lead to growth and even more leadership complexity. This study was conducted in order to establish the challenges that are faced by staff and students at satellite campuses of universities using the Riverside Campus of the Durban University of Technology as a case study. Literature on leadership and management theories, leadership in higher education and organisational structures was reviewed in order to contextualise the study. A sample of the executive leadership of the university used as a case study was interviewed in order to determine their attitudes towards the current organisational structure. Data was also gathered from the academic and administrative staff at the satellite campus used for the study as well as first and third year students at the same campus using questionnaires. This study is significant because it feeds into the year-long study that was initiated by the Leadership Foundation on Higher Education and conducted from 2010 and finished in July 2011 by the Hull University’s Scarborough Campus that was aimed at determining the most effective relationship between the centre (mother campus) and its satellite campuses, identifying tensions between the strategic and operational levels and making students’ experience consistent. The whole project was undertaken to arrive at a better understanding of the challenges of managing two or more campuses with particular emphasis on strategic matters, organisation, leadership and management structures. The study discovered that there were leadership challenges which were not unique to the university and campus used as a case study, but similar to those identified during literature review. Issues such as lack of leadership and strategic direction, diverse cultures, incomplete merger, isolation, inequitable distribution of resources and lack of development were identified as challenges that needed to be addressed. The study advances as original contribution the ‘Radial Structure’, which was greatly inspired by the natural movement, flow and distribution of energy and information in fractals. This structure ensures equity across all campuses irrespective of size and location. In the radial structure as suggested and implied by the name the corporate division is the source of energy in the form of vision, mission, goals, strategy, and resources which it disburses or radiates equitably across all the campuses. The corporate division is not attached to any campus, but it is a pole that provides an anchor for all the campuses. The energy or feedback is also radiated back to the corporate office from the campuses in the form of student fees, research output from staff and students, pass rates, information to aid decision-making and so on. The relationship that was established between the radial structure and the regression model developed from the responses of the students and theory, was that each campus should be fully-equipped with all the services that the users require for the campus to be fit for purpose. The radial structure would also allow for student services to grow and develop as the campus grows. Like any organisational structure, the radial structure could be adjusted to suit the needs of any university with satellite campuses. The organisational structure would also have to be revisited and adjusted as the needs of the university change. In essence the structure is aimed at ensuring that there is no leadership vacuum at any of the satellite campuses of a university.

This thesis investigates the neurobiological pathways that underpin learning of visual categories, and the behaviour associated with these neural systems. The work contains two strands. The first assesses the neural and behavioural predictions of the COmpetition between Verbal and Implicit Systems (COVIS) account of category learning. The second aims to examine the brain regions implicated in the prototype effect after transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). COVIS predicts there are separate explicit and implicit category learning systems. According to COVIS, the explicit system optimally learns rule-based (RB) categories and relies upon the frontal lobes for working memory (WM) and executive functioning processes, and the medial temporal lobes (MTL) to store decision boundaries. In contrast, the implicit system employs the basal ganglia to procedurally learn information-integration (II) categories through stimulus-response associations. Experiment 1 found little evidence of separable implicit or explicit systems in an fMRI study that investigated category decision making processes during RB and II category learning using conditions matched in difficulty, category separation and number of relevant stimulus dimensions. Contrary to the predictions of COVIS, the MTL was more active during the II condition compared to the RB condition, an area that should be more engaged by the explicit system. There was also extensive neural activation overlap found between RB and II learning. Experiments 2 and 3 aimed to generalise these neural findings to activation during feedback processing in RB and II conditions. Experiment 2 was a behavioural study which showed that adding a feedback delay necessary for fMRI data analysis did not differentially impact RB or II learning. Experiment 3, including this feedback delay, found the same neural pattern of results as Experiment 1 offering further support that the MTL is more engaged in II learning than RB learning. There was also again considerable overlap in the regions involved in the two tasks. Taken together, Experiments 1 to 3 found no evidence for the neurally dissociable category learning systems predicted by COVIS. Experiments 4, 5 and 6 investigated the behavioural dissociation reported by Smith et al. (2014) that deferring feedback to the end of a six trial block selectively impairs II learning compared to a unidimensional RB condition. Experiment 4 replicated this result. However, when equating the number of dimensions relevant for RB and II learning in Experiment 5, both conditions were hindered by deferring feedback, with Experiment 6 confirming that conjunctive RB learning was impaired by deferred feedback compared to immediate feedback. I concluded that the dissociation reported by Smith et al. is attributed to the use of a unidimensional category as a comparison for II performance, and that when the number of relevant stimulus dimensions between conditions are controlled there is little evidence for the separable systems of COVIS. Experiment 7 used tDCS to investigate if RB or II learning was differentially affected by anodal stimulation to the left DLPFC. Although there was no significant difference in learning between category conditions, during anodal stimulation participants improved less across blocks than those receiving sham stimulation. While the results suggest that the effect of tDCS on RB and II learning may be more tangible during stimulation, the numerical pattern of the data warrants further research into the possibility that RB participants are more affected by tDCS than II participants after stimulation to the left DLPFC. Strand 2 of this thesis aimed to further previous work that suggests anodal stimulation to the DLPFC during a prototype distortion task induced a prototype effect (better responding to unseen prototype trials than other category exemplars derived from this prototype) that was not present in sham participants. Contrary to this past work, Experiments 8 and 9 found that anodal stimulation to the left DLPFC inhibited a prototype effect that was present in sham participants. Experiment 10 implemented a combined tDCS and fMRI task and found that anodal participants engaged the stimulated DLPFC and the MTL more than sham participants in measures of the prototype effect. Based on these findings, this thesis argues that anodal tDCS to the left DLPFC inhibits perceptual learning by disrupting error prediction processes. Anodal participants are also considered to use generalization more than sham participants when perceiving category exemplars, a process attributed to the MTL.

Rapporten handlar om framställningen av ett prototypverktyg för konsultfirman Logica. Marknaden har idag ett stort behov av ett prototypverktyg och det är en lösning på det problemet som vi utvecklat. Utvecklingsarbetet är utfört i Java och har resulterat i ett program som kan rita upp prototyper och ett som kan visa och köra prototypprojekt. Projektets syfte har varit att effektivisera Logicas arbetssätt och tillgodose ett behov av en mjukvara som är avsett för att skapa och hantera prototyper av mjukvarusystem. Därutöver har projektet syftat till att erbjuda Logicas kunder mervärde då de får en körbar prototyp av det system de överväger att köpa.

Esse trabalho tem por objetivo descrever o desenvolvimento e os atuais resultados do protótipo dataflow PIFLOW, um processador baseado no modelo de dataflow dinâmico, inspirado na Maquina Dataflow de Manchester e desenvolvido no Instituto de Física de São Carlos, da Universidade de São Paulo. Esse protótipo foi capaz de oferecer speedups muito próximos do ideal, a partir de programas que possuem grande grau de paralelismo, apresentando o grande potencial deste modelo - já bastante estudado no decorrer das últimas décadas - em oferecer desempenho superior ao de processadores sequenciais comerciais modernos. / The aim of this work is to describe the development and the current results of the PIFLOW dataflow prototype, a processor based on the dynamic dataflow model of execution, inspired by the Manchester Dataflow Machine and developed in the Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo. This prototype shows speedups very close to the ideal case, when executing programs with a high degree of parallelism, showing the dataflow model potential, which has been extensibly analysed in the last decades, to offer higher performance when compared to commercial modern sequential processors.

När de traditionella skrivbordsapplikationerna görs om till webbapplikationer, ställer det krav på JavaScript som används mer och mer för att få fram ett responsivt gränssnitt på webben. För att underlätta utvecklingen av JavaScriptapplikationer har ett antal funktionsbibliotek skapats. I vår studie undersöker vi därför vilket av de två populäraste JavaScriptbiblioteken idag, jQuery och Prototype, som presterar bäst i dagens mest använda webbläsare. Dessa tester har utförts i ett testramverk som vi själva utvecklat för att vara webbläsaroberoende och inte kräva något av de bibliotek vi testar. Testerna är uppdelade i fyra testfall som körs 20 gånger för att ge ett mer tillförlitligt resultat. Vi har testat hur varje bibliotek hanterar traversering och manipulation av DOM-trädet, sätter och hämtar stilar och attribut på element i DOM-trädet och hanterar event på element i DOM-trädet. Testerna visade att biblioteket Prototype presterade bättre på alla utom ett testfall i majoriteten av våra utvalda webbläsare; det enda testfallet där jQuery presterade bättre än Prototype var där DOM-trädet skulle manipuleras. Trots att Prototype inte alls är lika omtalat som jQuery, verkar det vara ett bättre bibliotek att använda till webbapplikationer som ska ha ett interaktivt gränssnitt då det i flertalet av våra tester presterar bättre.

Facilitating the decision making process using models and patterns is viewed in this thesis to be really helpful. Data mining is one option to accomplish this task. Data mining algorithms can show all the relations within given data, find rules and create behavior patterns. In this thesis seven different types of data mining algorithms are employed. Monte Carlo is a statistical method that is used in the developed prototype to obtain random data and to simulate different scenarios. Monte Carlo methods are useful for modeling phenomena with significant uncertainty in the inputs. This thesis presents the steps followed during the development of a web-tool prototype that uses data mining techniques to assist decision-makers of port planning to make better forecasts using generated data from the Monte Carlo simulation. The prototype generates random port planning forecasts using Monte Carlo simulation. These forecasts are then evaluated with several data mining algorithms. Then decision-makers can evaluate the outcomes of the prototype (rules, decision tress and regressions) to be able to make better decisions.

One of the most common devices found worldwide in todays society, is the curtain in various designs. Different designs which requires different types of physical efforts to be used and adjusted to achieve the intended purpose. Due to lack of features in a regular vertical blind and its construction, it makes it hard to use and apply with normal behaviours of the human. Where the basic idea is based on a static design with a parallel relationship between the individual vertical blinds is the prototype based on individual movements of the blinds. A static relationship, which requires repeated adjustment through the day and the movement of the sun to achieve the desirable functionality. However, when the user gets interrupted and distracted for example at work repeatedly during a complete day, his or her performance and creativity at work will be reduced. In this paper I have chosen to focus on the interaction design of the vertical blind and how to improve the interaction relationship between it and the user. Also showing how it is possible to create solutions for a simple and common unit like a vertical blind, by means of interactive models, use cases, technical predictions and a proposal of a future GUI that makes it possible to implement the models in a prototype of an embedded system.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration in Project Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020 / This study aims to establish the essence of communication as a tool for effective project execution at selected construction sites in Cape Town, South Africa. There is increasing evidence that communication practices can play a significant role in accomplishing high quality construction projects. Communication has been precisely singled out as a foremost construction project management practice that can have an effect on successful project execution. Failure to convey the proper messages results in projects delay or project failure as the employees or subordinates will not be given the right instructions on what to do. Most companies that are involved in construction projects around Cape Town are failing to complete their projects in the given time, budget and scope due to poor communication. The general objective of the study was to determine if effective communication could lead to the success of construction projects in Cape Town. The study implemented descriptive and association research designs while the study population was drawn from construction a large company within the vicinity of Cape Town. The study used simple random sampling technique while the sample size was 80 employees and 10 managers. The study used questionnaires to collect data while. An excel data analysis tool was used to analyze quantitative data while data was presented using geometric techniques such as tables, bar-graphs and pie charts. The results of the study exposed that the relationship between construction project success and effective communication was significant. The study recommended that construction project companies should have strong and effective communication techniques.