The occurrence of devastating natural disasters in the past several years have prompted communities, responding organizations, and governments to seek ways to improve disaster preparedness capabilities locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. A holistic approach to design used in the aerospace and industrial engineering fields enables efficient allocation of resources through applied parametric changes within a particular design to improve performance metrics to selected standards. In this research, this methodology is applied to disaster preparedness, using a community's time to restoration after a disaster as the response metric. A review of the responses from Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, among other prominent disasters, provides observations leading to some current capability benchmarking. A need for holistic assessment and planning exists for communities but the current response planning infrastructure lacks a standardized framework and standardized assessment metrics. Within the humanitarian logistics community, several different metrics exist, enabling quantification and measurement of a particular area's vulnerability. These metrics, combined with design and planning methodologies from related fields, such as engineering product design, military response planning, and business process redesign, provide insight and a framework from which to begin developing a methodology to enable holistic disaster response planning. The developed methodology was applied to the communities of Shelby County, TN and pre-Hurricane-Katrina Orleans Parish, LA. Available literature and reliable media sources provide information about the different values of system parameters within the decomposition of the community aspects and also about relationships among the parameters. The community was modeled as a system dynamics model and was tested in the implementation of two, five, and ten year improvement plans for Preparedness, Response, and Development capabilities, and combinations of these capabilities. For Shelby County and for Orleans Parish, the Response improvement plan reduced restoration time the most. For the combined capabilities, Shelby County experienced the greatest reduction in restoration time with the implementation of Development&Response capability improvements, and for Orleans Parish it was the Preparedness&Response capability improvements. Optimization of restoration time with community parameters was tested by using a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. Fifty different optimized restoration times were generated using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm and ranked using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. The optimization results indicate that the greatest reduction in restoration time for a community is achieved with a particular combination of different parameter values instead of the maximization of each parameter.

I outline a framework for researching the effects of practice schedule on skill acquisition, based upon stage theories of information processing and stage theories of skill acquisition. Skilled performance requires stimulus identification, response selection, and response execution. I hypothesize that practice schedule affects learning in two types of information processing stages: stimulus-oriented and response-oriented stages. The loci of these effects differ based on the stage. In stimulus-oriented stages, practice schedule affects concept and categorization learning via contiguity of exemplars and feature saliency. In response-oriented stages, practice schedule affects the efficiency with which individuals produce a response by affecting response preparation. I evaluated this framework and theory with 4 experiments that manipulated practice schedule and amount of practice, in 2 domains with different information processing demands. Experiments~1~and~2 focused on response-oriented stages via a task that required participants to execute a multisegment movement according to a target time. Experiments~3~and~4 focused on stimulus-oriented stages via a task that required participants to categorize football play diagrams. Within the 2 task domains the amount of acquisition practice was manipulated to test whether different durations of acquisition training changed how practice schedules affected retention and transfer performance. The practice schedule manipulation had reliable effects on performance and learning when task performance involved either response preparation or induction of categorization rules. Practice schedule did not affect performance or learning when task performance involved categorization decisions, after the rules had been learned. Additionally, I report a novel method for quantifying amount of practice that allows comparisons across task domains.

<p><em>Knowledge has become one of the most important assets for companies nowadays. Knowledge Management (KM) uses organizational knowledge as a resource to make companies more competitive. Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are gaining popularity, however, the failure rate remains high, with many projects not achieving their goals or being shut down early. KMS are often underestimated and treated as normal systems. IS practices do not cover certain aspects specific to KMS, aspects that do not show in other IS (e.g. socio-cultural issues). There are many studies concerning the KMS failures but they just focus on the symptoms and do not provide a solution to the problem. The goal of this master’s dissertation is to generate a preventive tool that will help the KM field. With The experience gained by working in a real KMS project within a textile agency in Sweden and relevant literature, an Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) for KMS was developed. As some authors suggest, KM needs an ISDT of it’s own. An ISDT will guide practitioners through the process by restricting practices and features of the system to a more effective set. It will also encourage the academia to work on this theory for its improvement, completion, and validation</em></p>

<p>Evaluating software is a universal and complex problem. The question is: how should software be selected and adopted, or rather, which of the software packages is the most suitable for a specific environment? Extensive research on the evaluation of software has been done, but only a few researchers have considered evaluation of e-learning systems based on three software quality characteristics (i.e. usability, maintainability and deployability) for implementation in third world countries. In this thesis, it will be considered how to use a mixed research methods for the evaluation of free and open source e-learning systems in a developing country. The scope of this investigation is the evaluation of two free and open source e-learning systems at the Open University of Tanzania using 33 stakeholders (some with more and others with less computer expertise).</p>

There is a considerable scope for improving the temperature control of exothermic processes. In this thesis, a sub-optimal control strategy is developed through utilizing the dynamic, simulation tool. This scheme is built around easily obtained knowledge of the system and still retains flexibility. It can be applied to both exothermic batch and fed-batch processes. It consists of servo and regulatory modes, where a Generalized Predictive Controller (GPC) was used to provide self-tuning facilities. The methods outlined allow for limited thermal runaway whilst keeping some spare cooling capacity to ensure that operation at constraints are not violated. A special feature of the method proposed is that switching temperatures and temperature profiles can be readily found from plant trials whilst the addition rate profile Is capable of fairly straightforward computation. The work shows that It is unnecessary to demand stability for the whole of the exothermic reaction cycle, permitting a small runaway has resulted in a fast temperature response within the given safety margin. The Idea was employed for an exothermic single Irreversible reaction and also to a set of complex reactions. Both are carried out in a vessel with a heating/cooling coil. Two constraints are Imposed; (1) limited heat transfer area, and (11) a maximum allowable reaction temperature Tmax. The non-minimum phase problem can be considered as one of the difficulties in managing exothermic fed-batch process when cold reactant Is added to vessel at the maximum operating temperature. The control system coped with this within limits, a not unexpected result. In all cases, the new strategy out-performed the conventional controller and produced smoother variations in the manipulated variable. The simulation results showed that batch to batch variations and disturbances In cooling were successfully handled. GPC worked well but can be susceptible to measurement noise.

Distributed computing is very popular in the field of computer science and is widely used in web applications. In such systems, tasks and resources are partitioned among several computers so that the workload can be shared among the different computers in the network, in contrast to systems using a single server computer. Distributed system designs are used for many practical reasons and are often found to be more scalable, robust and suitable for many applications. The aim of this thesis is to study the properties of a distributed tree data-structure that allow searches, insertions and deletions of data elements. In particular, the b- tree structure [13] is considered, which is a generalization of a binary search tree. The study consists of analyzing the effect of distributing such a tree among several computers and investigates the behavior of such structure over a long period of time by growing the network of computers supporting the tree, while the state of the structure is instantly updated as insertions and deletions operations are performed. It also attempts to validate the necessary and sufficient invariants of the b-tree-structure that guarantee the correctness of the search operations. A simulation study is also conducted to verify the validity of such distributed data-structure and the performance of the algorithm that implements it. Finally, a discussion is provided in the end of the thesis to compare the performance of the system design with other distributed tree structure designs.

In developing training for new technologies, designers encounter many options in an effort to increase system knowledge and produce effective system usage. Technological advancements do, however, provide the opportunity for more dynamic and interactive training methods. Moreover, technology may require the acquisition of time-sensitive skills. Many technologies have automatic shut-off or low-power functions, like the shutting off the backlight of a cell phone after 30 seconds. These system functions may lead to errors for novice users or for infrequent tasks. To develop effective training for time-sensitive tasks, the learner needs instruction on how to accurately perform the task at a particular pace. One potentially fruitful avenue of exploration is to provide the learning goal during training through the pace of the training materials. This presentation pace is the rate at which training tasks are presented to the learner during training; this pace may be fixed or self-regulated. The goal of the current study was to examine the role of presentation in learning a complex technology using four types of pacing for younger adults (Experiment 1) and older adults (Experiment 2). The results of this study show there seems to be a benefit of self-paced training for younger adults and older adults. These findings provide insight into future studies investigating the underlying mechanisms related to the benefits of self-paced training. Additionally, the findings have implications for the development of training paradigms for time-sensitive technologies.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo a especificação de um conjunto de módulos de circuito, capazes de executar as funções de multiplexação relativas Hierarquia Digital E1, do ITU-T. A fim de alcançar o objetivo proposto, são realizadas consultas as normas nacionais (Praticas Telebrás) e internacionais (ITU-T) e estudos bibliográficos acerca do projeto e implementação dos circuitos executores das funções de multiplexação E1. Após a fase inicial de especificação e projeto dos módulos de circuito, os mesmos foram submetidos a intensa rotina de simulações, a fim de validar as arquiteturas propostas. Os módulos de circuito projetados são apresentados e descritos. Os resultados das simulações desenvolvidas são mostrados e comentados. Os módulos poderão ser empregados na produção de um chip-set de circuitos integrados para implementação de equipamentos multiplexadores E1. / The aim of this work is the specification of a set of circuit modules, capable to perform the multiplexing functions related to the ITU-T's E1 Digital Hierarchy. In order to reach the proposed objective, the national (Telebris Practices) and international (ITU-7) standards are consulted, as well as bibliographical references for the design and implementation of E1 multiplexing functions performing circuits. After the initial step of specification and design of the circuit modules, they are submitted to an intensive simulation routine, in order to validate the proposed architectures. The designed circuit modules are presented and described. The simulation results are shown and discussed. These modules may be used in the production of an integrated circuits chip-set, for implementation of El multiplexing equipments.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo a especificação de um conjunto de módulos de circuito, capazes de executar as funções de multiplexação relativas Hierarquia Digital E1, do ITU-T. A fim de alcançar o objetivo proposto, são realizadas consultas as normas nacionais (Praticas Telebrás) e internacionais (ITU-T) e estudos bibliográficos acerca do projeto e implementação dos circuitos executores das funções de multiplexação E1. Após a fase inicial de especificação e projeto dos módulos de circuito, os mesmos foram submetidos a intensa rotina de simulações, a fim de validar as arquiteturas propostas. Os módulos de circuito projetados são apresentados e descritos. Os resultados das simulações desenvolvidas são mostrados e comentados. Os módulos poderão ser empregados na produção de um chip-set de circuitos integrados para implementação de equipamentos multiplexadores E1. / The aim of this work is the specification of a set of circuit modules, capable to perform the multiplexing functions related to the ITU-T's E1 Digital Hierarchy. In order to reach the proposed objective, the national (Telebris Practices) and international (ITU-7) standards are consulted, as well as bibliographical references for the design and implementation of E1 multiplexing functions performing circuits. After the initial step of specification and design of the circuit modules, they are submitted to an intensive simulation routine, in order to validate the proposed architectures. The designed circuit modules are presented and described. The simulation results are shown and discussed. These modules may be used in the production of an integrated circuits chip-set, for implementation of El multiplexing equipments.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Peninsula Technikon, 2004 / This dissertation was written in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology in the Faculty of Information Technology at the Peninsula Technikon in South Africa. The dissertation covers the introduction of the study; the reviews of the case, Free and Open Source Software; the discussion of methodology of software project management in terms of software engineering; the analysis of assessment methods; the techniques of using PHP, MySQL, Apache and CVS; and the implementation of a test module. The research represents the consideration of the problem, namely that there are few free assessment manager programmes that can be used for the quick and efficient deployment of academic assessments. An experimental research method was used to with the aim of solving the above problem. In other words, a test management system module had to be designed and implemented to function within the architectural constraints of a developing Open Source Software (OSS) Learning Management System (LMS), which is called Knowledge Environment for Web-based Learning Next Generation (KEWL.NextGen). The test management system is a module developed on Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in PHP and MySQL application. The scripts of this test module are written under the KEWL.NextGen' application framework, which is based on a close approximation of model, view and controller (MVC) design III pattem. Now the entire source coding of the test module has been uploaded to Web site http://kngforge.uwc.ac.za. This test module can be used for the creation and management of an online test. It provides facilities to create a new test, and to preview, edit, delete and mark an existing test. Three question types have been achieved, namely multiple-choice, true/false and short answer.