La neumonía es la principal causa de muerte en niños menores de 5 años en el mundo. Se calculan más muertes por neumonía que por VIH, malaria y sarampión. Considerando la alta tasa de mortandad infantil por neumonía; el objetivo principal de este proyecto de tesis, fue diseñar e implementar un prototipo electrónico para detección temprana contra la neumonía en infantes. Para este propósito, se usó un sensor de temperatura, el LM35, el cual se adaptó a un electrodo médico, de esta manera fue adherido al cuerpo del paciente, además se usó un sensor magnético adaptado a una banda elástica, la cual se colocó alrededor del tórax del paciente. Estos sensores midieron la temperatura corporal en °C y el número de respiraciones por minuto (RPM), respectivamente. Ambas mediciones se acondicionaron, usando el amplificador operacional LM358N y se procesaron usando un Microcontrolador PIC16F877A. Los datos procesados pasaron a una PC mediante una interface de comunicación USB. Previamente en la PC se cargó una aplicación informática escrita y desarrollada en Visual Basic, la cual contó con una interface gráfica, donde se visualizó el resultado de la prueba. Las pruebas se hicieron con siete niños de diferentes edades, de los cuales mencionaremos solo a tres. La cuarta prueba se realizó con un niño de 2 años de edad, obteniendo como resultado una temperatura corporal de 39°C, 37 RPM y como diagnóstico, la temperatura corporal es excesiva y próxima a taquipnea. La quinta prueba se realizó con una niña de cuatro años de edad, obteniendo como resultado una temperatura corporal de 39°C, 31 RPM y como diagnóstico, la temperatura corporal es excesiva y próxima a taquipnea. La séptima prueba se realizó en una niña de 1 año de edad, obteniendo como resultado una temperatura corporal de 39°C, 34 RPM y como diagnóstico, la temperatura corporal es excesiva y próxima a taquipnea, siendo estas las condiciones necesarias para prevenir de forma temprana la neumonía como lo indica en su opinión la profesional médico a la que recurrimos. Estos resultados mostraron que el prototipo logró el objetivo principal, al diseñar un equipo de prevención contra la neumonía. Pneumonia is the main cause of death in children under five years old, in the world. More deaths are estimated by pneumonia than HIV, malaria and measles. According to the high infant mortality rate from pneumonia; the main target of this thesis is design and implement an electronic prototype for early detection pneumonia in infants. For this purpose, I use a temperature sensor, the LM35, which was adapted to a medical electrode, in this way was attached to the patient’s body, also I use a magnetic sensor adapted to a rubber band, which was placed around the patient's chest. These sensors measure the body temperature in °C and the number of breaths per minute (BPM), respectively. Both measurements were conditioned using the LM358N operational amplifier and processed using a PIC16F877A microcontroller. Data processed are transferred to a PC by an USB communication interface. Previously, in a Desktop computer was installed a software application developed in Visual Basic, which it has a graphical interface and test’s result is visualized. The tests were performed with seven children of different ages, of which I will mention only three cases. The fourth test was performed with a two years old boy, resulting in a body temperature of 39 °C, 37 BPM and as a diagnostic, body temperature is over and close to tachypnea. The fifth test was performed with a four years old boy, resulting in a body temperature of 39 °C, 31 BPM and as a diagnostic, body temperature is over and close to tachypnea. The seventh test was performed on a baby girl of 1 year old, resulting in a body temperature of 39 °C, 34 BPM and as a diagnostic, body temperature is over and close to tachypnea, focusing on these results, these are the necessary conditions to prevent such early pneumonia according to opinion of professional medical that support me. These results showed that the prototype achieved the main objective, to design a prevention equipment against pneumonia.

The system Spacewalk is a managment tool for the linux operating systems based on RPM package manager. The aim of thesis is adding support to Spacewalk for DEB package managment system, which is connected with Debian, a distribution of linux operating system. The result is native support of managing Debian system by the Spacewalk, what includes a registration of system, distribution of configuration files, remote scripts running and managment of DEB packages.

No description available.

No description available.

The control of excessive water production in oil and gas producing wells is of increasing importance to the field operator, primarily when trying to maintain the survivability of a mature field from shut in. During the last two decades many chemicals have been studied and applied under the name of relative permeability modifier (RPM) to combat this problem. These chemicals were mostly bullheaded individually into the affected zones, consequently their application resulted in low to medium success, particularly in treating reservoirs suffering from matrix flow. It has been found that the disproportionate permeability reduction depends on the amount of polymer dispersed or absorbed by the porous rock. If single polymers are employed to treat excessive water production in a matrix reservoir they cannot penetrate deep into the formation rock because the polymer will start to build as a layer on the surface of the rock grains. As a result the placement of polymer into the formation will no be piston like and the dispersion over the rock pores will be uneven. To improve water shutoff technology a method of injecting chemicals sequentially is recommended provided that the chemical’s viscosity is increasing successively with the chemicals injected. / Experimentally confirmed, injecting chemicals sequentially provides better results for conformance control. The value of post treatment water mobility is conspicuously lowered by the method of applying injecting chemicals sequentially in comparison with the single chemical injection method. For instance, the residual resistance factor to water (Frrw) at the first cycle of brine flushing for this method is approximately five times higher than the Frrw obtained by injecting only one single chemical. Furthermore, for the second cycle of brine flushing Frrw is still higher by a ratio of about 2.5. In addition to this improvement residual resistance factor to oil Frro for this method is less than two which has been considered as the upper limit for conformance control in matrix reservoir. Accordingly injecting chemical sequentially can be applied for enhancing relative permeability modifier performance in matrix reservoir.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union coupled with the growing sophistication of international terror organizations has brought about a desire to ensure that a sound infrastructure exists to interdict smuggled nuclear material prior to leaving its country of origin. To combat the threat of nuclear trafficking, radiation portal monitors (RPMs) are deployed around the world to intercept illicit material while in transit by passively detecting gamma and neutron radiation. Portal monitors in some locations have reported abnormally high gamma background count rates. The higher background data has been attributed, in part, to the concrete surrounding the portal monitors. Higher background can ultimately lead to more material passing through the RPMs undetected. This work is focused on understanding the influence of the concrete surrounding the monitors on the total gamma ray background for the system. This research employed a combination of destructive and nondestructive analytical techniques with computer simulations to form a model that may be adapted to any RPM configuration. Six samples were taken from three different composition concrete slabs. The natural radiologcal background of these samples was determined using a high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector in conjunction with the Canberra In-Situ Object Counting System (ISOCS™) and Genie™ 2000 software packages. The composition of each sample was determined using thermal and fast neutron activation analysis (NAA) techniques. The results from these experiments were incorporated into a Monte Carlo N-Particle (MNCP) photon transport simulation to determine the expected gamma ray count rate in the RPM due to the concrete. The results indicate that a quantitative estimate may be possible if the experimental conditions are optimized to eliminate sources of uncertainty. Comparisons of actual and simulated count rate data for 137Cs check sources showed that the model was accurate to within 15%. A comparison of estimated and simulated count rates in one concrete slab showed that the model was accurate to within 4%. Subsequent sensitivity analysis showed that if the elemental concentrations are well known, the carbon and hydrogen content could be easily estimated. Another sensitivity analysis revealed that the small fluctuations in density have a minimal impact on the gamma count rate. The research described by this thesis provides a method by which RPM end users may quantitatively estimate the expected gamma background from concrete foundations beneath the systems. This allows customers to adjust alarm thresholds to compensate for the elevated background due to the concrete, thereby increasing the probability of intercepting illicit radiological and nuclear material.

The purpose of this project is to establish a correlation between precipitation and background gamma radiation levels at radiation portal monitors (RPM) deployed at various ports worldwide, and to devise a mechanism by which the effects of these precipitation-induced background fluctuations could be mitigated. The task of detecting special nuclear materials (SNM) by passive gamma spectroscopy is very difficult due to the low signal-to-noise ratio observed in an uncontrolled environment. Due to their low activities and the low energies of their characteristic gamma rays, the signals from many types of SNM can easily be obscured by background radiation. While this can be somewhat mitigated by taking regular background radiation measurements, even this cannot resolve the issue if background levels change suddenly and dramatically. Furthermore, any increase in background count rate will increase the statistical uncertainty of the count rate measurement, and thus decrease the minimum quantity of SNM that can be reliably detected. Existing research suggests that the advent of precipitation is the culprit behind many such large and sudden increases in background radiation. The correlation between precipitation and background levels was explored by in-situ testing on a full-scale portal monitor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and by comparing previously recorded background radiation and weather data from portal monitors located at ports worldwide. The first was utilized to determine the frequency and magnitude at which precipitation introduces background activity, and the second was used to quantify the effects of various quantities and types of precipitation in various parts of the world. Once this analysis was complete, various methods of mitigating these changes in background radiation were developed based on the collected data. Precipitation was found to be the most common culprit for rapid increases in background count rate, and was attributable to 85.6% of all such events. Based on extensive simulation via the Origen-ARP and MCNP software, a response function for the portal monitor was developed, and an algorithm designed to predict the contribution of the precipitation to the background count rate was developed. This algorithm was able to attenuate the contribution of precipitation to the background count rate by an average of 45% with very minimal over-correction. Such an algorithm could be utilized to adjust the alarm levels of the RPM to better allow it to compensate for the rise and fall in background count rate due to precipitation. Additionally, the relative contribution of precipitation which landed at various distances from the portal monitor to the increase in background count rate was measured via simulation. This simulation demonstrated that 37.2% of all background counts were due to the radon daughters which landed within a 2.76 m radius from the center of the portal monitor. This radius encompasses the area between the two portals. Based on this, several designs for shielding were simulated, the most successful of which was a concrete structure that was able to attenuate 71.3% of the background radiation caused by a given precipitation event at a materials cost of approximately $6,000 per RPM. This method is recommended as the primary means of mitigating this issue.

Retroreflective Raised Pavement Markers (RRPMs) supplement other pavement markings to provide guidance to road users. Previous research concerning durability of the RRPMs suggests that their performance has been degrading over the years. One of the main causes for underperformance of the RRPMs is the lack of appropriate laboratory testing standards that can test the adequacy of the RRPMs to perform in field conditions. There is a need to modify the existing standards or develop new testing procedures that can better simulate field conditions. This requires identifying critical locations and magnitudes of stresses inside the markers during the tire-marker impacts that happen on roads. The goal of this research was to identify critical magnitudes and locations of the stresses in RRPMs during the tire-marker impacts by doing the finite element modeling and simulation of the impacts, and use the information to recommend laboratory testing procedures that could simulate real-world conditions. The researcher modeled and simulated the tire-marker impacts using the finite element tools Hypermesh and LS DYNA. He calibrated the material properties of the marker models to improve the tiremarker model. Based on the tire-marker impact simulations, the researcher concluded that the critical compressive stresses during impacts are located at the edge contacts of retroreflective sides with the top surface. The critical stresses may also occur at lower and upper corners of the marker. The other areas, especially the lower half of the marker, had tensile stresses. Angle of impact was found to be a critical external variable that affected the stresses inside the markers and the marker-pavement interface forces. The researcher then modeled and simulated a few laboratory-testing procedures that could simulate the field performance of the RRPMs. Based on these simulations, the researcher recommended that the ASTM compression test for evaluation of RRPMs be continued or a similar test be developed. He suggested development of one new test (named as offset compression test) that could better replicate the field conditions. He also recommended having a review of the ASTM flexural test.

The prevalence of multicore architectures has accentuated the need for scalable on-chip communication media. Various parallel applications and programming paradigms use a mix of unicast (one-to-one) and multicast (one-to-many) to maintain data coherence and consistency. Providing efficient support for these communication patterns becomes a critical design point for on-chip networks (OCN). High performance on-chip networks design advocates balanced traffic across the whole network, which makes adaptive routing appealing. Adaptive routing explores the path diversity of the network, increases throughput, and reduces network latency compared with oblivious routing. In this work, we propose an adaptive multicast routing, Balanced Recursive Partitioning Multicast (B-RPM), to achieve balanced one-to-many on-chip communication. The algorithm derives its functionality from previously proposed algorithm Recursive Partitioning Multicast (RPM). Unlike RPM which uses fixed set of directional priorities and position of destination nodes, B-RPM replicates packet based on the local congestion information and position of destination nodes with respect to current node. B-RPM employs a new deadlock avoidance technique Dynamically Sized Virtual Networks (DSVN). Built upon the traditional virtual networks, DSVN dynamically allocates the network resources to different VNs according to the run-time traffic status, which delivers better resources utilization. We also propose a new scheme for representing multiple destinations in packet head. The scheme works simply by differentiating multicast and unicast packets. The algorithm combined with dynamically sized virtual networks enables us to improve network performance at high load on average by 20% (up to 50%) and saturation throughput of network on average by 10% (up to 18%) over the most recent multicast algorithm. Also the new header representation scheme enables us to save 24% of dynamic link power.

Ayant été au pouvoir pendant près de 10 ans, les années conservatrices se distinguent par leur engagement clair pour une justice plus répressive. Selon ces derniers, ce sont les attentes du public canadien qui justifient ces mesures. Qu’en est il vraiment de l’opinion publique canadienne? À partir du cadre conceptuel de la rationalité pénale moderne (RPM), cette étude vise à observer et décrire la diversité des opinions présentes dans les mémoires soumis au Comité permanent de la justice et des droits de la personne (CPJDP), lors de l’étude des projets de loi C-9 (Loi modifiant le Code criminel (emprisonnement avec sursis)) et C-10 (Loi sur la sécurité des rues et des communautés). Par l’analyse de contenu, les 71 mémoires ont été codifiés pour faire ressortir les idées associées à la RPM et celles qui présentent des innovations cognitives. Les opinions émises dans ces mémoires peuvent être classées dans trois grandes catégories. Tout d’abord, nous retrouvons les opinions de groupes appuyant le durcissement législatif proposé dans les projets de loi, à l’aide de théories de la peine et de principes reliés à la RPM. Ensuite, un deuxième groupe d’opinions émergeant des mémoires se positionne en défaveur des projets de loi, sans toutefois délaisser les principes d’exclusion et d’affliction au fondement de la RPM. Finalement, certains acteurs sociaux parviennent à sortir du cadre conceptual de la RPM pour innover et proposer des modes d’intervention alternatifs aux peines afflictives.