The aim of this diploma paper is to analyze the Customer Self-Repair project in Hewlett-Packard especially from costs and savings point of view that can be expected after the implementation of procedural changes that had to be made in the course of the project, while also indicate where mistakes were made from the perspective of project management and make suggestions on possible improvements in the future. The theoretical and methodological part is summed up a general theory concerning the problems of project management. The third chapter focuses on the practices of project management in the company, the definition stage the project should undergo and the criteria that should meet in order to pass the approval process. In the analysis of the project itself is captured the service model for the repairs of personal computers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Than identification of error and procedural complications that occurred during the project. . At the end of this chapter is an analysis of actual savings and costs that can be realistically expected in the closing phase of the project. The last chapter contains a summary and suggestions for management of future projects in the company.

In the current research project the functions of self-initiated self-repairs in an advanced Japanese language classroom were investigated. From the reviewed literature it was found that repairing is possible through monitoring, which includes error detection, and involves attention and memory. Therefore, data was collected on the abilities of the participants in the current research project to repair, monitor and their attention levels and memory. There were seven methods used to collect data; participant observation, classroom interaction tape recordings, a questionnaire, stimulated recall interviews, attention test, memory and attention test and proficiency level assessments. From the participant observation, classroom interaction tape recordings and stimulated recall interviews data was collected on the repairs that the participants made and the way in which they monitored was explored. The questionnaire revealed relevant background information, such as, number of years the participants had studied Japanese, which supplemented other information collected. The attention test and memory and attention tests were used to obtain information on the participants’ perceptions of their levels of attention and their actual levels of attention and memory respectively. The final data collected was on the participants’ own perceptions of their speaking proficiency levels in Japanese and an independent judge’s evaluation of their levels. The results of the data collected on the way in which the participants repaired and monitored showed that overall the participants repaired and monitored in ways that had been discussed in previous research on repairing and monitoring. However, for the first known time, phenomena related to repairing and monitoring, which the researcher terms as communication strategies, are used frequently by the participants and also, that these communication strategies used and repairs made by the participants were not needed to be made. In other words, the participants in the current research project were often repairing errors that had not been made. As for the data collected on the participants’ attention levels and memory, no significant differences were found between the participants and neither did any differences reflect on the ways in which the participants repaired. From the proficiency level assessments, further evidence was found that supported previous research done on repairing and monitoring as well. Also, it was found that the participants under-estimated their levels of proficiency in comparison to the independent judge’s evaluations. Therefore, the participants both over repair and under estimate their Japanese speaking abilities. This is seen as detrimental to the participants’ performances in Japanese. Recommendations are made to use this data provided by Japanese language learners when repairing to guide instruction and to encourage learners to gain fluency by repairing less often than is thought necessary.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Emma Betz / Using conversation analytic methodology, this paper examines the self-repair of actions in everyday German conversation, with focus given to the replacement of verbs and the subsequent effect on actions. While study has been done on the function of recycling repair within a turn (Fox, Hayashi, Jesperson, 1996) no research has been done on the function of verb replacement and its effect on talk. This paper shows that verb replacement is a strategy employed by speakers in order to either a) negotiate what type of action is preferred within a particular TCU or b) to invoke external forces to either deflect an action, or to make a particular action available to an interlocutor. This paper concludes by discussing the specific function of this particular type of repair and how it is useful in repairing problematic actions.

The disposal of electronic waste is becoming one of the growing problems that the planet is facing. Tons of electronic waste is dumped illegally to 3rd world countries. Consequently the local people in those countries are exposed to levels of toxicity that could cause them serious diseases as well as the degradation on the natural ecosystems. The electronic waste is perceived as useless by our society, and this project aims to challenge that idea by looking at sustainable ways of manipulating electronics.

No description available.

This study investigates the use of two communicative strategies in particular, namely self- repair and repetition, in political interviews with Jean-Claude Juncker where English is used as a lingua franca (ELF). While ELF has received increasing attention throughout the past years, with a variety of researched genres ranging from higher education (e.g. Björkman 2011; Kaur 2011; Mauranen 2006) and business (Bjørge 2010; Firth 1996; Ehrenreich 2009; Pullin Stark 2009) to domestic settings (e.g. Klötzl 2014; Pietikäinen 2014), the genre of political interviews remains largely under-researched – despite it being such a highly international and high-stakes domain. Therefore, the aim of the present research is to include this domain to the list of researched genres, and thereby to gain a better understanding of how a politician uses ELF in his official role. The data comprises four interviews with the president of the EU-commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, with a total interview-time of 35 minutes. The interviews have been transcribed in their entirety for the purpose of the present study, and the data was analysed drawing on conversation analytic approaches. Both self-repair and repetition were frequently identified as clarification strategies in the data and their functions comply to a large extent with previous findings from ELF research (e.g. Kaur 2011; Lichtkoppler 2007; Mauranen 2006). Repetition was found to be used as a strategy to specify utterances and ensure understanding and self-repair to either right the wrongs or raise explicitness. In addition to that, the use of repetition showed some interview-genre related functions as well, such as the use of repetition to influence and interrupt the regular turn-taking structure of interviews. This study shows that the use of ELF is in fact to a certain extent different in political interviews than in other researched genres, and therefore suggests that further studies within this genre would significantly contribute to the field of research into ELF.

失語症病患(aphasic patients)的研究對於語言的運作機制提供了一些訊息，讓我們能從不同的角度認識大腦的運作。本篇研究的目的在於探討失語症病患的自我修補表現(self-repair performance)，我們利用一套具有五大自我修補項目的分類系統分析病患的表現並將參與研究的四位失語症病人區分為流利型(fluent)以及非流利型(non-fluent)病患，之後再分別將四位病人與其治療師一對一的各別談話錄音、譯寫。在流利型的組別之中，我們收集了207個威尼克病患(Wernicke’s aphasics)的自我修補語料，而在非流利型組別當中，則收集了347個布洛卡病患(Broca’s aphasics)的自我修補語料。 結果顯示，威尼克病患與布洛卡病患在自我修補的整體表現基本上是相似的，也就是說，在這五大項目的自我修補模式中，他們使用每一項的頻率是沒有顯著差異的。因此，我們認為自我修補是一種溝通能力的表現，而這樣的能力並不會受到病人各自的語言缺陷所影響。然而，我們得知兩種類型的病患在自我修補的表現上，依然具有一些細微的不同。威尼克病患使用了較多的填補模式(the completion pattern)，這或許與他們較流暢的表達能力有關係，因為他們能較不費力的把尚未完整說出的詞彙補述完成。布洛卡病患則是使用了較多的取代模式(the substitution pattern)，這或許是因為他們的理解能力較好，幫助他們監控了自己說話裡頭的錯誤並進而修正。 此外，比較中文正常說話者與失語症病患的表現，我們發現每一種自我修補項目被使用的比率亦是相似的。這種情況或許提供了一種證明，表示我們在使用自我修補的模式上，都有一種共同的傾向(universal tendency)。 總結來說，在自我修補的表現上，影響失語症病患的三個可能因素是1、在語言處理過程中的複雜度。2、不同類型病人各自具有的語言缺陷。3、每一種自我修補模式所具有的實用性。 / Studies of aphasic patients provide more information for understanding mechanisms of language processing, since we can know more details of the human brain from a different perspective. The purpose of this study is to investigate self-repair performance of aphasics. A classification system made up of five major categories was adopted to analyze their performance. We divided four patients into fluent and non-fluent groups and collected conversation recordings of these four therapist—patient dyads. In fluent group, 207 self-repairs were recognized in the conversation between therapists and Wernicke’s (fluent) patients. In the non-fluent group, 347 self-repairs were found in the conversation between therapists and Broca’s (non-fluent) patients. Results indicated that the overall self-repair performance of Wernicke’s (fluent) and Broca’s (non-fluent) aphasics was similar. That is, the distribution frequency in the five categories was not significantly different. We therefore suggest that the self-repair performance is a communication-oriented ability, and it is not interfered by specific language deficits. However, there were still subtle differences between the two patient groups. We speculate that the relative higher percentage of the completion pattern in Wernicke’s (fluent) group is due to their rather fluent production ability, since they can fulfill an unfinished word without too much difficulty. On the other hand, Broca’s (non-fluent) patients used more of the substitution pattern. That is, they can detect the problems within their own speech and further correct them. This could be attributed to the self-monitoring ability brought by their better comprehension. In addition, comparing with the studies of Mandarin normal speakers (Chui, 1996; Tseng, 2006), we found that the distribution frequency of each self-repair pattern in aphasic patients was similar with the distribution in normal speakers. This similarity might indicate a universal tendency of the self-repair use. In sum, there are three possible factors affecting the self-repair performance of aphasics, they are the processing difficulty, the linguistic deficits of different patients, and the value of the repair pattern.

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices offer a suitable platform for survivable hardware architectures in mission-critical systems. In this dissertation, active dynamic redundancy-based fault-handling techniques are proposed which exploit the dynamic partial reconfiguration capability of SRAM-based FPGAs. Self-adaptation is realized by employing reconfiguration in detection, diagnosis, and recovery phases. To extend these concepts to semiconductor aging and process variation in the deep submicron era, resilient adaptable processing systems are sought to maintain quality and throughput requirements despite the vulnerabilities of the underlying computational devices. A new approach to autonomous fault-handling which addresses these goals is developed using only a uniplex hardware arrangement. It operates by observing a health metric to achieve Fault Demotion using Recon- figurable Slack (FaDReS). Here an autonomous fault isolation scheme is employed which neither requires test vectors nor suspends the computational throughput, but instead observes the value of a health metric based on runtime input. The deterministic flow of the fault isolation scheme guarantees success in a bounded number of reconfigurations of the FPGA fabric. FaDReS is then extended to the Priority Using Resource Escalation (PURE) online redundancy scheme which considers fault-isolation latency and throughput trade-offs under a dynamic spare arrangement. While deep-submicron designs introduce new challenges, use of adaptive techniques are seen to provide several promising avenues for improving resilience. The scheme developed is demonstrated by hardware design of various signal processing circuits and their implementation on a Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA device. These include a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) core, Motion Estimation (ME) engine, Finite Impulse Response (FIR) Filter, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) blocks in addition to MCNC benchmark circuits. A iii significant reduction in power consumption is achieved ranging from 83% for low motion-activity scenes to 12.5% for high motion activity video scenes in a novel ME engine configuration. For a typical benchmark video sequence, PURE is shown to maintain a PSNR baseline near 32dB. The diagnosability, reconfiguration latency, and resource overhead of each approach is analyzed. Compared to previous alternatives, PURE maintains a PSNR within a difference of 4.02dB to 6.67dB from the fault-free baseline by escalating healthy resources to higher-priority signal processing functions. The results indicate the benefits of priority-aware resiliency over conventional redundancy approaches in terms of fault-recovery, power consumption, and resource-area requirements. Together, these provide a broad range of strategies to achieve autonomous recovery of reconfigurable logic devices under a variety of constraints, operating conditions, and optimization criteria.

[pt] Esta dissertação investiga a utilização de técnicas de Eletrônica Evolucionária nos processos de reparo e ajuste de circuitos eletrônicos. O objetivo do trabalho foi avaliar o desempenho de algoritmos de computação evolucionária no reparo de circuitos eletrônicos efeituosos e no ajuste e melhoria de circuitos não ótimos, fornecendo desta forma, base teórica e experimental para ferramentas de reparo e ajuste automático de circuitos. A necessidade de ferramentas que efetuem reparos de circuitos eletrônicos em situações emergenciais, bem como a diversidade de defeitos encontrados nos vários tipos de circuito, motivaram esta pesquisa. O trabalho de pesquisa foi desenvolvido em 6 etapas principais: um estudo sobre algoritmos evolutivos e suas aplicações na área da Eletrônica Evolucionária; uma revisão de estratégias de múltiplos objetivos que culminou na proposta de um novo parâmetro de importância para os objetivos dos algoritmos evolutivos e na reformulação do cálculo do erro no Método de Minimização de Energia; o projeto de um protótipo de plataforma reconfigurável; a proposta de uma técnica de reparos e ajustes por evolução extrínseca; a proposta de uma técnica de reparos e ajustes por evolução intrínseca; e o estudo de casos. De acordo com o objetivo do trabalho de avaliar o desempenho do algoritmos evolutivos no reparo e ajuste de circuitos eletrônicos, primeiramente efetuou-se um estudo sobre a aplicação destes algoritmos na área da eletrônica evolucionária. Este estudo envolveu as diferentes formas de representação e avaliação, bem como os principais operadores. Também fez parte deste estudo estratégias de múltiplos objetivos e suas aplicações na otimização e síntese de circuitos, tanto por evolução extrínseca quanto intrínseca. Como resultado deste estudo preliminar, verificou-se a necessidade de reavaliar a metodologia de múltiplos objetivos baseada na minimização de energia, atribuindo valores de importância diferentes aos diferentes objetivos dos algoritmos evolutivos. Foi proposto então um parâmetro Importância do Objetivo que prioriza atender aos objetivos mais importantes desses algoritmos. Ou seja, privilegia as mais relevantes características avaliadas do circuito. Foi ainda revista a fórmula de cálculo do erro no Método de Minimização de Energia, sugerindo-se outra que baseia-se na avaliação do melhor indivíduo. Esta proposta visa direcionar o processo evolutivo para os objetivos não satisfeitos do melhor indivíduo. As técnicas de reparos e ajustes automáticos por evolução extrínseca aqui propostas são muito semelhantes às técnicas de síntese de circuitos por computação evolucionária. Foi dada especial atenção à avaliação dos circuitos e aos objetivos dos algoritmos que estão intimamente relacionados com o circuito original não defeituoso ou com o circuito ideal. Para realizar reparos e ajustes automáticos por evolução intrínseca faz-se necessário o uso de uma plataforma reconfigurável de circuitos eletrônicos. Isto implica em uma diferente forma de representação dos circuitos quando comparamos esta técnica com aquela baseada em evolução extrínseca. Além disso, técnicas de inicialização da população dos algoritmos evolutivos foram utilizadas para orientar a evolução com base na topologia do circuito falho. Para possibilitar a realização de experimentos com evolução extrínseca, foi projetado e implementado um protótipo de plataforma reconfigurável para circuitos analógicos chamada de PAMA. Foram realizados estudos de caso de modo a avaliar o desempenho destas técnicas de reparos e ajustes automáticos tanto por evolução extrínseca quanto por evolução intrínseca. Além disso foi avaliada a relevância e o desempenho do parâmetro Importância do Objetivo. Nos estudos de caso realizados foram utilizados circuitos bem conhecidos, como portas TTL / [en] This dissertation investigates the application of Evolvable Hardware Techniques in the process of repair and adjustment of electronic circuits. The objective of this work was to evaluate the performance of evolvable techniques in the repair of defective electronic circuits and in the adjustment of non-optimum circuits, providing theoretical and experimental basis for self-adjustment and self-repair tools. The need of emergency repair tools for electronic circuits, besides the diversity of damages that can be found in various types of circuits has motivated this research. This research had 6 steps: a study on evolvable algorithms and its application in Evolvable Hardware field; a review of multi-objective strategies that motivated the proposal of the parameter Objective`s Importance and of a new formula to calculate the error in the Energy Minimization Method; the design of a prototype of reconfigurable platform; the proposal of techniques to extrinsically evolve the repair and to adjust circuits; a proposal of techniques to intrinsically repair and adjust circuits; and the case studies. According to the objective of this work of evaluating the performance of evolvable algorithms in the repair and adjustment of electronic circuits, at first a study on representation, evaluation and operators of these algorithms was done. Multi-objective strategies and its applications in extrinsic and intrinsic evolution for optimisation and synthesis of circuits was also part of this study. As result of this preliminary study, was observed that each objective has a different importance. If this importance is not assigned to the objectives, some circuits may have a good fitness but important objectives may not be satisfied while not so important ones may be. The use of a new parameter called Objective`s Importance was proposed to solve this problem. The calculus of the error in the Energy Minimization Method was also reformulated to give more importance to the best individual. The techniques of extrinsic evolvable repair and adjustment proposed here are very similar to the evolvable techniques used to synthesize circuits. The circuits` evaluation and algorithm`s objectives were studied and some changes were proposed. To intrinsically repair circuits is necessary to use a reconfigurable platform of analog circuits. This method is different from the extrinsic one. The individuals representation in this case may vary and depends on the platform used. Techniques to initialise populations were used to seed the population. To make intrinsic evolution experiments possible, a reconfigurable platform for analog circuits called PAMA was designed and implemented. Through the case studies the performance of the techniques proposed were evaluated. Tests with intrinsic and extrinsic systems were done. The relevance and performance of the Objective`s Importance parameter was also studied. Well known analog circuits like TTL gates and amplifiers were used in the experiments. The results showed the accomplishment of such class of techniques and tools, which are very useful to repair circuits, especially in emergencies. Due to the viability of using evolvable techniques and its advantages when compared to the regular methods, the plans are, in future work, to keep testing variations of these methods and testing these techniques in bigger circuits. / [es] Esta disertación investiga la utilización de técnicas de electrónica Evolutiva en los procesos de reparación y ajuste de circuitos electrónicos. El objetivo del trabajo fue evaluar el desempeño de algoritmos de computación evolutiva en la reparación de circuitos electrónicos defectuosos y en el ajuste y mejoría de los circuitos no óptimos, ofreciendo una base teórica y experimental para herramientas de reparación y ajuste automático de circuitos. La necesidad de herramientas que efectuen reparaciones de circuitos electrónicos en situaciones de emergencia, bien como la diversidad de defectos encontrados en los varios tipos de circuito, motivaron esta investigación. El trabajo de investigación fue desarrollado en 6 etapas principales: un estudio sobre algoritmos evolutivos y sus aplicaciones en el área de la Electrónica Evolutiva; una revisión de estrategias de múltiples objetivos que culminó en la propuesta de un nueva parámetro de importancia para los objetivos de los algoritmos evolutivos y en la reformulación del cálculo del error en el Método de Minimización de Energía; el proyecto de un prototipo de plataforma reconfigurable; la propuesta de una técnica de reparaciones y ajustes por evolución extrínseca; la propuesta de una técnica de reparaciones y ajustes por evolución intrínseca; y el estudio de casos. De acuerdo con los objetivo del trabajo de evaluar el desempeño del algoritmos evolutivos en la reparación y ajuste de circuitos electrónicos, primeramente se efectuó un estudio sobre la aplicación de estos algoritmos en el área de la electrónica evolutiva. Este estudio involucró las diferentes formas de representación y evaluación, así como los principales operadores. También forma parte de este estudio las estrategias de múltiples objetivos y sus aplicaciones en la optimización y síntesis de circuitos, tanto por evolución extrínseca como intrínseca. Como resultado de este estudio preliminar, se verificó la necesidad de reevaluar la metodología de múltiples objetivos baseada en la minimización de energía atribuyendo valores de importancia diferentes a los diferentes objetivos de los algoritmos evolutivos. Se propone entonces un parámetro Importancia del objetivo que prioriza atender los objetivos más importantes de esos algoritmos. O sea, favorece las características más relevantes del circuito. Se revisó la fórmula de cálculo del error en el Método de Minimización de Energía sugiriendo otra que se basa en la evaluación del mejor individuo. Esta propuesta direcciona el proceso evolutivo para los objetivos no satisfechos del mejor individuo. Las técnicas de reparación y ajustes automáticos por evolución extrínseca que aqui se proponen son muy semejantes a las técnicas de síntesisde circuitos por computación evolucionaria. Fue dada especial atención a la evaluación de los circuitos y al os objetivos de los algoritmos que están íntimamente relacionados con el circuito original no defectuoso o con el circuito ideal. Para realizar reparaciones y ajustes automáticos por evolución intrínseca se hace necesario el uso de una plataforma reconfigurable de circuitos electrónicos. Esto trae consigo una forma diferente de representación de los circuitos cuando comparamos esta técnica con la basada en evolución extrínseca. Además, técnicas de inicialización de la populación de los algoritmos evolutivos fueron utilizadas para orientar la evolución con base en la topología del circuito fallo. Para poder realizar los experimentos con evolución extrínseca, se proyectó e implementado un protótipo de plataforma reconfigurable para circuitos analógicos llamada de PAMA. Fueron realizados estudios de caso de modo a evaluar el desempeño de estas técnicas de reparaciones y ajustes automáticos tanto por evolución extrínseca cuanto por evolución intrínseca. En los estudios de caso realizados se utilizaron circuitos bien conocidos, como puertas TTL y pré-ampli