General purpose graphics processing units (GP-GPU), owing to their enormous thread-level parallelism, can significantly improve the power consumption at the near-threshold (NTC) operating region, while offering close to a super-threshold performance. However, process variation (PV) can drastically reduce the GPU performance at NTC. In this work, choke points—a unique device-level characteristic of PV at NTC—that can exacerbate the warp criticality problem in GPUs have been explored. It is shown that the modern warp schedulers cannot tackle the choke point induced critical warps in an NTC GPU. Additionally, Choke Point Aware Warp Speculator, a circuit-architectural solution is proposed to dynamically predict the critical warps in GPUs, and accelerate them in their respective execution units. The best scheme achieves an average improvement of ∼39% in performance, and ∼31% in energy-efficiency, over one state-of-the-art warp scheduler, across 15 GPGPU applications, while incurring marginal hardware overheads.

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Die Firma VÚTS, a.s., beschäftigt sich mit der Konstruktion und Herstellung von speziellen Einzweckmaschinen, die sie mit ihren entwickelten die Umsetzung der zuständigen Technologie ermöglichenden Steuerungssystemen bestückt. Die Abteilung für Mechatronik führt mehr als 10 Jahre die Anwendungsforschung von elektronischen Kurvenscheiben basierend auf HW und SW-Komponenten von Yaskawa (Japan) / 2 / durch. Da die Anwendung von elektronischen Kurvenscheiben mit den eigenen Steuersystemen zusammenhängt, wurde ein allgemeines Steuersystem entwickelt, das auf dem Konzept einer Zustandsmaschine mit manueller und automatischer Betriebsart basiert. Dieses Konzept ist im Bereich der Steuersysteme für Werkzeugmaschinen üblich. Der grundlegende Unterschied liegt jedoch in der automatischen Betriebsart, bei der die Programmlogik der elektronischen Kurvenscheiben zum Steuern einzelner NC-Achsen verwendet wird. Die Bewegung der Arbeitsglieder bzw. einzelner Achsen wird von den Bewegungsgesetzen abgeleitet, einschließlich der ersten und der zweiten Ableitungen, die in den Vorwärtskopplungen der Geschwindigkeit und des Momentes der Kaskadenregelstruktur in dem Servo-Wandler verwendet sind. Das Konzept des Steuersystems mit elektronischen Kurvenscheiben wurde für eine Anzahl von Einzweckmaschinen verwendet, von denen zwei Vertreter erwähnt werden. [... aus der Einleitung]

The study focuses on the work in preschool among the youngest children's and their participation in the choice of literature, the literature that is available to use in the daily activities. The purpose of the study is to describe the essence of the experience of the youngest children's participation in the choice of literature by studying the teachers' perception and experiences. The study investigates the teachers' perceptions and experiences in relation to the choice of literature and how staff at preschools try to ensure that the literature is perceived as interesting and relevant by the children. The study is based on the sociocultural theory. As a methodological approach, phenomenology was used because it allows the participants to describe their own experiences. The study was carried out at four different preschools, through a qualitative method where the investigation is based on the educators' own experiences and thoughts about participation in the choice of literature for the youngest children at preschool. As a data collection method, semi-structured interviews were used and through the use of phenomenological analysis, four overarching themes were identified in the educators' responses. The themes identified were purpose, the view of participation, the children's interest and access. The results show that when there is a purpose to the literature around a specific work, it is perceived to be more difficult to make the children involved. Participation is shown instead by the pedagogues starting from the children's interests when they themselves choose literature. Furthermore, it is made visible that the view of participation is expressed as something theoretical rather than something that educators consciously work with in practice. Inside the own preschool department, the children are made to participate by freely choosing from available literature. The availability of books does not seem decisive for the children's participation, but on the other hand, the lack of access to time and resources is something that is expressed as an obstacle to being able to make the children participate to the extent desired. Preschools that have libraries in their own operations let the children accompany them to the library to a greater extent and choose literature. The available literature on the subject is sparce which suggest further studies on the subject is needed

This paper comprehensively examines a new type of social media influencer characterized by altruistic tendencies. Utilizing the popular YouTube channel Vlogbrothers as the case study text for a constant comparative analysis, this research explores how the strategies altruistic influencers use to mobilize their community for good, the characteristics of the altruistic influencers, and how altruistic influencers create community. Through an in-depth analysis of 30 Vlogbrothers videos, the themes of education, community, and shared humanity emerged. Education, shared values, and calls to action are discussed as essential for mobilizing communities in charitable endeavors. Authenticity, quality, accessibility, and solutions-focused action were found to be vital characteristics of altruistic influencers. Structure, collaboration, multi-format content, parasocial relationships, and traditions are discussed as community-building tools for altruistic influencers. This research contributes to the existing literature on corporate social responsibility and purpose-driven organizations within the realm of social media influencers. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of "altruistic influencer" as a distinct category within this literature. By outlining the key characteristics and strategies observed in altruistic influencers, this study provides a valuable framework for other influencers to model and encourages further exploration of this field.

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Traflic safety and accessibility have been two important subjects in transportation research. On the one hand traffic crashes bring about high societal costs and serious health risks for urban road users. The cost oftraffic crashes is estimated to be 17 billion euros per year only in the Netherlands while over 600 people were killed in traffic, of whom 229 were cyclists and 195 were car users [l, 2]. Accessibility, on the other band, is regarded as one of the indicators of the quality of the transport system serving the public. There is comprehensive literature investigating the relationship between traffic crashes and factors associated with traffic, roadway design, built environment, and human factors. Similarly, several studies assessed and evaluated accessibility levels of individuals, communities, and regions by utilizing the aforementioned. factors. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity ofliterature investigating the relationships between accessibility and traffic safety. This is especially surprising considering that both subjects are associated with a similar set of factors, including land use and transport systems, as weil as individual and temporal factors [3-7]. The relationships between accessibility and traffic safety can be an adverse one; for example, improved accessibility by increasing the travel speeds (i.e., declining travel time) intensifies the crash risks which also deteriorates equity. Furthermore, levels ofboth accessibility and traffic safety are not homogeneous throughout urban areas and among different population groups. Based on the literature, it is obvious that accessibility is associated with economic equity [8]. lt is revealed that accessibility of lower-income groups is substantially worse than the higher-income groups as these groups have less mobility [9]. Previous studies also showed. that lower-income groups usually suffer from traffic safety problems more than other socio-economic groups [10-12]. Therefore, this research aims to address the aforementioned gap in the literature in understanding the relationships between accessibility levels and traffic safety with a focus on social equity perspecti.ves. For this purpose, a Gravity model and risk exposure evaluation approaches are utilix.ed to analyze traffic safety and accessibility to jobs by bicycle via extending the traditional definition of accessibility based on only travel time or proximity to a location.

The purpose of this study was to identify existing relationships between the perceptions of novice teachers regarding their teacher preparation programs, the support given to teachers from their schools, and the purpose of school. The study took place in Northeast Tennessee. Seventeen teachers from three different school systems participated in individual qualitative interviews, which lasted about one hour each. The finding corroborated the theory analyzed for this study and revealed areas for improvement in all levels of the education system. Teachers suggested meaningful changes to teacher preparation programs, including changes to general prerequisites and reorganizing education programs around meaningful field experience connected with adequate theory. Teachers suggested school districts to refine some programs they already have in place and improve their support. When prompted about the purpose of school, most teachers found a lack of connection between the expectations of school from state level and the purpose of school. The suggestions given by teachers matched the suggestions given by research regarding what needs to change to achieve the purpose of school.

The world's water resources face unsustainable pressure from population growth, changes in consumption patterns, pollution, and overexploitation. Water resources managers have developed holistic approaches such as IWRM (Integrated Water Resources Management) and, more recently, the WEEF (Water-Energy-Environment-Food) nexus to address the situation. However, their application in day-to-day water resources management is still challenging due to the of little knowledge, data, and tools. One area where that challenge needs practical solutions is reservoir operation. The current study aims to improve the reservoir module in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) so that operation rules that aim to meet various water, food, and electricity objectives can be simulated. The improved SWAT model is used to simulate the management of the Sélingué reservoir in Mali, West Africa. The reservoir operation was simulated under three different operation rules: 1) priority to monthly hydropower production (HPP) target (rule 1); 2) respect of predefined monthly target storage (rule 2); 3) priority to downstream environmental flow, irrigation, and municipal water demands (rule 3). Results show that when priority is given to the HPP target (rule 1), 98.3% of the electricity demand is met. At the same time, the dam can supply 81.72% of the water demand to maintain environmental flow and sustain irrigation and municipal water consumption. It also ensures water availability with an annual target storage deviation estimated at 1.8%. When rule 2 is implemented, a gap of 8.5% between electricity production and electricity demand is observed. Rule 2 also failed to sustain environmental flow and supply flow for irrigation and municipal consumption as a gap of 15.39% between the supply and the demand was observed. Similarly to rule 1, It ensures water availability with an annual target storage deviation estimated at 1.25%. When rule 3 is enforced (i.e., the priority is given to environmental flow, irrigation, and municipal water demands) the reservoir can maintain the environmental flow and maintain irrigation, and municipal water requirements with a gap of 17.7% between the supply and the demands. However, HPP production decreases with a gap of 12.56% between the electricity supply and demand. Its capacity to supply water in the long term is low as it has the highest target storage deviation with a value of 18%. These results indicate that rule 1 offers more guarantees considering the food and electricity security and environmental challenges. Note that the simulations are done assuming that these rules are systematically followed. In practice, decision-makers can deviate from a rule in exceptional circumstances to maximize benefits or avert unwanted consequences. Finally, a decision support system (DSS) was developed to assist decision-makers in selecting efficient reservoir operation policies for multipurpose reservoirs combining HPP and irrigation.

To re-purpose an abandoned wine cooperative into a set of workshops and studios with a focus on re-interpreting the role of the ‘crafts apprentice’ in a contemporary setting. The project hopes to upsurge society’s interest in the cultural value that such skills and products hold today, as a way of ceasing the decrasing number of dissapearing crafts and craftmen and women. Simultaneously and above all, the main effect that the interventions to this building and the activities taking place is hoping to have, is to add a transcendental societal, communal and sociological value for our community.