A study has been conducted into the causes of cycle by cycle variations in combustion within a spark ignition engine, the best measured engine parameter to use for its characterization, and the effects that: ignition timing, equivalence ratio, fuel type, throttle position and knock, have upon it. A Ricardo E6 single cylinder variable compression ratio research engine was instrumented to allow measurement of: cylinder pressure, temperatures, speed, load, fuel flow and air flow. The engine was also fitted with an optical slice that allowed optical access to the combustion chamber and enabled measurement of the early flame speed (up to 10 mm from spark plug gap) using a laser schileren system. Cylinder pressure data were collected on a dedicated HP1000 computer for every degree of crank angle rotation for up to 300 successive cycles. A phenomenological model was developed for turbulent combustion that split the combustion process into three phases: early laminar burn, turbulent combustion, and final burn. The model allowed the study of the physical phenomena occurring within the combustion chamber and enabled insights to be gained into their effects on combustion and cyclic variations. The study showed: The variation in mixture strength has a far greater effect on the average and Coefficient of Variation (COV) values of all the combustion performance parameters, than does changing the fuel type. Cycle by cycle variations in combustion are best characterized by COV of imep. The onset of knock has no discernible effect on the COVs of the measured parameters. The part throttle results show higher COVs than at Wide Open Throttle (WOT) due to slower burn, supporting the theory that faster initial flame speeds reduce cyclic variations. The combustion model was used to support the hypothesis that cycle by cycle variations are caused by movement of the flame kernel by turbulence within the combustion chamber.

In this thesis, we discuss some topics in random matrix theory which have applications to probability, statistics and quantum information theory. In Chapter 2, by relying on the spectral properties of an associated adjacency matrix, we find the distribution of the maximum of a Dyck path and show that it has the same distribution function as the unsigned Brownian excursion which was first derived in 1976 by Kennedy. We obtain a large and moderate deviation principle for the law of the maximum of a random Dyck path. Our result extends the results of Chung, Kennedy and Khorunzhiy and Marckert. In Chapter 3, we discuss a method of sampling called the Gibbs-slice sampler. This method is based on Neal's slice sampling combined with Gibbs sampling. In Chapter 4, we discuss several examples which have applications in physics and quantum information theory.

Content: The braiding structure of leather fibers has not been understood clearly and it is very useful and interesting to study it. Microscopic X-ray tomography (MCT) technology can produce cross-sectional images of the leather without destroying its structure. The three-dimensional structure of leather fibers can be reconstructed by using MCT slice images, so as to show the braiding structure and regularity of leather fibers. The denoising and segmentation of MCT slice images of leather fibers is the basic procedure for three-dimensional reconstruction. In order to study the braiding structure of leather fibers in the round, the image of resinembedded leather fibers MCT slices and in situ leather fibers MCT slices were analyzed and processed. It is showed that the resin-embedded leather fiber MCT slices were quite different from that of in situ leather fiber MCT slices. In-situ leather fiber MCT slice image could be denoised relatively easily. But denoising of resin-embedded leather fiber MCT slice image is a challenge because of its strong noise. In addition, some fiber bundles adhere to each other in the slice image, which are difficult to be segmented. There are many methods of image denoising and segmentation, but there is no general method to process all types of images. In this paper, a series of computer-aided denoising and segmentation algorithms are designed for in-situ MCT slice images of leather fibers and resin-embedded MCT slice images. The fiber bundles in wide field MCT images are distributed densely, adherent to each other. Many fiber bundles are separated in one image and tightly bound in another. This brings great difficulties to image segmentation. To solve this problem, the following segmentation methods are used: Grayscale-threshold segmentation method, The region-growing segmentation method, Three-dimensional image segmentation method. The denoising and segmentation algorithm proposed in this paper has remarkable effect in processing a series of original MCT slice images and resin-embedded leather fibers MCT slice images. A series of threedimensional images based on this work demonstrate the fine spatial braiding structure of leather fiber, which would help us to understand the braiding structure of leather fibers better. Take-Away: presentation ppt, Figures

Xylen är ett starkt toxiskt ämne, som trots att dess hälsofarliga egenskaper länge varit kända, fortsatt har använts som klarningsmedel i den histologiska processen. Syftet med den här studien var att undersöka om det betydligt mindre hälsofarliga lösningsmedlet, Histolab Clear, kunde substituera xylen som klarningsmedel, utan att kompromissa med kvalitén på de histologiska glas som laboratoriet lämnar ut för granskning. Två serier med samma uppsättning vävnadsbitar preparerades och dehydrerades med var sitt klarningsmedel. Klossarna granskades och bedömdes utifrån snittbarhet, färgkvalité och snittkvalité. Vid jämförelse av de två serierna visades inga betydande skillnader inom något av bedömningsområdena. Att resultatet är likvärdigt inom alla tre bedömningsområden stärker slutsatsen att Histolab Clear är ett bra alternativ som xylensubstitut. Däremot visar studien även att klossarnas snittbarhet tydligt påverkas av tjockleken på den utskurna vävnadsbiten. Tjocka vävnadsskivor ger en sämre snittbarhet vilket kan påverka snittets kvalité. För att säkra snitt av hög kvalité med välbevarad morfologi, bör det vid utskärningen inte tas vävnadsskivor som är tjockare än fyra millimeter. / Xylene is a highly toxic substance that, despite its long-known hazardous characteristics, still has been used as a clearing agent in the histological process. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the significantly less toxic solvent, Histolab Clear, could substitute xylene as a clearing agent, without compromising the quality of the histological slides released by the laboratory for examination. Two series with the same set of tissue pieces were prepared and dehydrated with a clarifying agent each. The blocks were examined and assessed based on sectionability, quality of color and quality of section. When comparing the two series, no significant differences were shown in any of the assessment areas. The fact that the result is equivalent in all three assessment areas reinforces the conclusion that Histolab Clear is a good alternative to substitute xylene. However, the study also shows that the sectionability of the blocks is clearly affected by the thickness of the tissue. Thick tissue slices result in poorer sectionability, which can affect the quality of the slide. To ensure high quality sections, with well-preserved morphology, tissue slices that are thicker than four millimeters should not be cut during grossing.

Dendritic spines are small protrusions that receive 90% of excitatory cortical synapses and are critically important to neural function. Each dendritic spine is supported by a dynamic actin cytoskeleton that responds to internal and external cues to allow spine development, elongation, retraction and movement. Multiple proteins have roles in spinogenesis, but until now, a regulatory role for actin itself has not been established. Here, we show that, in the acute slice preparation, actin expression increases during a period of rapid spinogenesis. Furthermore, actin overexpression in organotypic hippocampal cultures leads to a significant increase in spine density on CA1 pyramidal cells. Specifically, the number of filopodia (long, thin protrusions without heads) increases by 38% on secondary apical dendrites and 88% on basal dendrites and the number of elongated spines with heads increases by 162% on secondary apical dendrites and 113% on basal dendrites. Synapsin-I immunostaining demonstrated that the majority of filopodia and elongated spines are apposed by axon terminals. Additionally, we show that overexpressed actin enters both new and established spines within 24 h. These data demonstrate that neurons undertaking spinogenesis upregulate actin expression, that actin overexpression per se increases spine density, and that both new and established spines incorporate exogenous actin.

As cores have become better at exposing Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP), they have become bigger, more complex, and consumes more power. These cores are approaching the Power- and Memory-wall quickly. A new microarchitecture proposed by Carlson et. al claims to solve these problems. They claim that the new microarchitecture, the Load Slice Core, is able to outperform both In-Order and Out-of-Order designs in an area and power restricted environment. Based on Carlson et. al.’s work, we have implemented and evaluated a prototype version of their Load Slice Core using the In-Order Core Ariane. We evaluated the Load Slice Core by comparing the LSC to an IOC when running a microbenchmark designed by us, and when running a set of Application Benchmarks. The results from the Microbenchmark are promising, the LSC outperformed the comparable IOC in each test but problems related to the configuration of the design were found. The results from the Application Benchmarks are inconclusive. Due to time constraints, only a partially functioning LSC were compared to a comparable IOC. From these results we found that the LSC performed comparably or slightly worse than its IOC counterpart. More research on the subject is required for any conclusive statement on the microarchitecture can be made, but it is the opinion of this paper’s authors that it does show promise.

Time-dependently changing hierarchical data structures are commonly visualized with animated treemaps. Changes in the data structure produce correlated changes in the animation. While previous treemap animations exclusively consider hierarchical data where only the size of the data points are time-dependently changing, we present a novel method for animating treemaps where the hierarchy of the data structure is also evolving. A change in the hierarchy is referred to as a topological event of the animated treemap. Furthermore, animation stability is a quantitative indicator as to the visual quality of treemap animations. With the proposed method, the stability of animated Slice-and-Dice treemaps is maximized during topological events. Thus, the method produces topologically evolving Slice-and-Dice treemap animations of high visual quality. Inspiration for the proposed method was largely drawn from Köpp and Weinkauf’s recent work on the ordered visualization of time-dependently evolving nested graphs. The research question regarded whether their treemap method for spatially ordering hierarchical data could be translated to the 2D treemap space, in order to optimize the stability of animated Slice-and-Dice layouts. This study does not only report on the development of the proposed method, but also present an accompanying experimental evaluation. While evidence show that the proposed method is incapable of entirely mitigating decreasing stability scores, caused by any possible topological event in an evolving Slice-and-Dice hierarchy, the success of the proposed method has been proven for the most frequent topological events. / Tidsberoende förändringar i hierarkiska datastrukturer visualiseras ofta med animerade trädkartor (efter engelskans treemap). Förändringar i datastrukturen producerar korrelerade förändringar i animationen. Medan tidigare trädkartsanimationer sett till hierarkisk data där endast storleken på datapunkterna förändras över tid, så presenterar vi en ny metod för animation av trädkartor där även datastrukturens hierarki förändras. En förändring av hierarkin kallas för en topologisk händelse i den animerade trädkartan. Animationsstabilitet är vidare en kvantitativ indikator för animerade trädkartors visuella kvalitet. Med den föreslagna metoden så har stabiliteten av animerade Slice-and-Dice-trädkartor optimerats under topologiska händelser. Metoden producerar följaktligen topologiskt föränderliga Slice-and-Dice-animationer med hög visuell kvalitet. Studien har huvudsakligen inspirerats av Köpp och Weinkaufs arbete med den sorterade visualiseringen av tidsföränderliga, nästlade grafer. Forskningsfrågan gällde huruvida deras metod för att ordna den hierarkiska datan kunde översättas till trädkartors tvådimensionella rymd, för att i ett vidare steg optimera stabiliteten av animerade Slice-and-Dice-trädkartor. Studien rapporterar ej enbart om utvecklingen av den föreslagna metoden, utan presenterar även en medföljande experimentell utvärdering. Medan man ur bevisen kan utläsa att metoden ej fullständigt kan mildra minskningar i animationsstabilitet, orsakat av alla de möjliga topologiska händelser som kan ske i en föränderlig Slice-and-Dice-hierarki, så har den föreslagna metoden varit framgångsrik i de mest frekventa fallen.

This thesis examines two different approaches to parsing event-based vehicular signal data to produce input to a neural network prediction model: event parsing, where the data is kept unevenly spaced over the temporal domain, and slice parsing, where the data is made to be evenly spaced over the temporal domain instead. The dataset used as a basis for these experiments consists of a number of vehicular signal logs taken at Scania AB. Comparisons between the parsing methods have been made by first training long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural networks (RNN) on each of the parsed datasets and then measuring the output error and resource costs of each such model after having validated them on a number of shared validation sets. The results from these tests clearly show that slice parsing compares favourably to event parsing. / Denna avhandling jämför två olika tillvägagångssätt vad gäller parsningen av händelsebaserad signaldata från fordon för att producera indata till en förutsägelsemodell i form av ett neuronnät, nämligen händelseparsning, där datan förblir ojämnt fördelad över tidsdomänen, och skivparsning, där datan är omgjord till att istället vara jämnt fördelad över tidsdomänen. Det dataset som används för dessa experiment är ett antal signalloggar från fordon som kommer från Scania. Jämförelser mellan parsningsmetoderna gjordes genom att först träna ett lång korttidsminne (LSTM) återkommande neuronnät (RNN) på vardera av de skapade dataseten för att sedan mäta utmatningsfelet och resurskostnader för varje modell efter att de validerats på en delad uppsättning av valideringsdata. Resultaten från dessa tester visar tydligt på att skivparsning står sig väl mot händelseparsning.

Intuition is an important aspect of counseling, several revered counselors have either attested to the powers of their intuition or have had such powers attributed to them by their contemporaries. Moreover, many counselors believe that their intuition is more influential in their work with clients than are evidence-based practices (EBPs). However, the academy criticizes intuition for its susceptibility to cognitive errors and its poor performance when compared to statistical methods. In addition, the exact nature of intuition’s role in counseling is largely unknown. Therefore, its contribution to client outcomes is equally a mystery, making it difficult for counselors to justify their reliance on its powers. Until this study, counselor intuition has been regarded as a, more or less, phantom construct in need of evidence to even suggest that it does in fact exist. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop the Counselor Intuition Scale (CIS). The construction of the CIS began by adapting the methodology of instruments already in existence and whose purpose was to measure interpersonal and emotional sensitivity. The construction of the CIS began by creating a series of 39 video segments (lasting approximately two minutes each) depicting a client discussing a presenting problem. The video segments were then reviewed by two rounds of counseling experts (N = 45) whose intuitive responses to the clients featured in the CIS were used to create the criterion responses of the instrument. The expert responses were analyzed using Q-Methodology, the results of which suggested that the counseling experts approached the clients from a unidimensional perspective, which the researcher named "counselor intuition." The expert ratings were also analyzed using generalizability theory to assess the consistency of expert responses, the results of which iv suggested that interrater reliability was excellent, ranging from .88 to .85. Lastly, the experts identified 263 criterion responses that can be used for the future development of the instrument. The implications of the study’s findings, as well as the recommendations for future research are discussed

Measles virus (MV) can cause severe acute diseases as well as long-lasting clinical deteriorations due to viral-induced immunosuppression and neuronal manifestation. How the virus enters the brain and manages to persist in neuronal tissue is not fully understood. Various mutations in the viral genes were found in MV strains isolated from patient brains. In this study, reverse genetics was used to introduce mutations in the fusion, matrix and polymerase genes of MV. The generated virus clones were characterized in cell culture and used to infect rat brain slice cultures. A mutation in the carboxy-terminal domain of the matrix protein (R293Q) promoted the production of progeny virions. This effect was observed in Vero cells irrespective of the expression of the signaling lymphocyte activation molecule (SLAM). Furthermore, a mutation in the fusion protein (I225M) induced syncytia formation on Vero cells in the absence of SLAM and promoted viral spread throughout the rat brain slices. In this study, a solid ex vivo model was established to elucidate the MV mutations contributing to neural manifestation.