Current FPGA technology has advanced to the point that useful embedded SoPCs can now be designed. The Real Time Processor (RTP) project at Brigham Young University leverages the advances in FPGA technology with a system architecture that is customizable to specific applications. A simple real-time processor has been designed to provide support for a hardware-assisted real-time operating system providing fast context switches. As part of the hardware RTOS, the following have been implemented in hardware: scheduler, register banks, mutex, semaphore, queue, interrupts, event, and others. A novel circuit called the Task-Resource Matrix has been created to allow fast inter/intra processor communication and synchronization.

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Introduktion: Efter en främre korsbandsskada och korsbandsrekonstruktion (ACLR) drabbas många av en upprepad skada. En anledning kan vara att en ACL-skada medför neuroplastiska förändringar som kan ge ett ökat neurokognitivt beroende. Det här kan i sin tur innebära en nedsatt kapacitet att utföra motoriska uppgifter med samtidiga sekundära uppgifter – även kallat dual task-förmåga. Graden av neurokognitivt beroende mäts ofta genom dual task-tester (DT-tester) där den s.k. DT-kostnaden då kan komma att avslöjas. Syfte: Att undersöka om individer med ACLR visar större DT-kostnad än oskadade individer under hopptest med sekundära kognitiva uppgifter. Därtill att undersöka om självskattad psykologisk beredskap har ett samband med dual task-kostnaden hos individer med ACLR. Metod: 20 personer med ACLR och 20 personer utan knäbesvär utförde drop jump-test med sekundära kognitiva uppgifter (DT-testet). Både motoriska och kognitiva prestationer utvärderades. Gruppernas prestationer jämfördes mellan varandra med oberoende T-test. För kartläggning av psykologisk beredskap, omfattande känslor, självförtroende och riskbedömning användes enkäten Anterior Cruciate Ligament Return to Sport after Injury (ACL-RSI). För att bedöma sambandet mellan ACL-gruppens prestationer på DT-testet och totalpoängen på ACL-RSI användes Pearson’s korrelationskoefficient. Resultat: De oberoende t-testen bekräftade att ACL-gruppen presterade sämre än kontrollgruppen på DT-testet. I den motoriska uppgiften hade ACL-gruppen medelvärdet 85 % och kontrollgruppen 94,6 %. I den kognitiva uppgiften hade ACL-gruppen medelvärdet 66.7 % och kontrollgruppen 82,9%. Det uppvisades ett svagt positivt men ej signifikant samband mellan ACL-gruppens prestationer på DT-testet och ACL-RSIs totalpoäng. Konklusion: ACL-gruppen presterade sämre än kontrollgruppen på DT-test med sekundär kognitiv utmaning. Däremot visade sig psykologisk beredskap inte influera ACL-gruppens prestation på DT-testet. Resultaten styrker hypotesen att individer med ACLR har svårare att utföra DT-test med sekundära kognitiva utmaningar, men inte hypotesen att lägre psykologisk beredskap negativt påverkar deras prestationer.

Bakgrund: Hälso- och sjukvårdens svårigheter att erbjuda hög tillgänglighet till läkare uppmuntrar till överföring av arbetsuppgifter från läkare till sjuksköterskor. Tidigare studier visar att kvalitet, leverans och effektivitet använts för utvärdering av sjuksköterskemottagning. Utvärderingen ges ett mer balanserat perspektiv om även arbetsmiljön följs upp. För att förbättra tillgänglighet och arbetsmiljö införde Hudkliniken i Östergötland sjuksköterskemottagningar för olika diagnosgrupper.   Syfte: Syftet med förbättringsarbetet var att införa sjuksköterskemottagningar för att öka tillgängligheten och samtidigt förbättra kvaliteten, leveransen, effektiviteten och arbetsmiljön. Syftet med studien var att ta tillvara erfarenheter av förändringsarbetet.   Metod: Arbetsgrupper utvecklade och testade sjuksköterskemottagningar i liten skala. Etablerad förbättringsmetodik användes som metodstöd. Mått på kvalitet, leverans, effektivitet och arbetsmiljö definierades. En fallstudie genomfördes för att studera förbättringsarbetet. Individuella intervjuer och fokusgruppsintervjuer genomfördes. Data analyserades via kvalitativ innehållsanalys.   Resultat: Tillgängligheten till återbesök förbättrades delvis. Kvaliteten och effektiviteten förbättrades. Patienterna kunde delvis erbjudas besök när behovet var aktuellt. Sjuksköterskornas ökade kontakt med patienterna förbättrade arbetsmiljön samtidigt som det ökade antalet arbetsuppgifter ökade stressen. Utveckling av flera parallella sjuksköterskemottagningar gav effekt på verksamheten i sin helhet.   Slutsats: Sjuksköterskemottagning kan förbättra tillgängligheten. Erfarenheterna av förändringsarbetet föranleder ytterligare förändring av arbetsinnehållet och arbetsorganisationen. Kvalitet, leverans, effektivitet och arbetsmiljö var värdefulla mått för uppföljning av resultatet. / “Our wishes and their needs” Nurse-led clinics to increase access to healthcare A study of implementing nurse-led clinics at a Dermatology Department   Background: The demand for timely access to healthcare service encourage task shifting from physicians to nurses. Previous studies of task-shifting evaluated quality, delivery and efficiency. Including the work environment in the evaluation can make it more balanced. In order to improve access and the working environment, the Department of Dermatology in Östergötland Region introduced nurse-led clinics for some groups of patients.   Purpose: The purpose of the improvement work was to introduce nurse-led clinics to increase access and improve quality, delivery, efficiency and working environment. The purpose of the study of the improvement work was to identify the experience of the change process.   Methods: Working groups developed and tested nurse-led clinics on a small scale, using common improvement methodology. Measures of quality, delivery, efficiency and the working environment were defined. A case study of the improvement work was conducted. Interviews, individual and focus group, were used to gather data. The data was analyzed via qualitative content analysis.   Results: Access to return visits was partly improved and patients were partly offered appointments right when they needed them. The increased contact between nurses and patients was seen as an improvement to the work environment although the number of tasks also increased nurses stress levels. The simultaneous implementation of several nurse-led clinics affected the clinic as a whole.   Conclusion: Nurse-led clinics can improve patient access. As a result of the improvement work, the tasks and organization within the clinic require additional review. Measures of quality, delivery, efficiency and working environment were useful for performance evaluation.

Background and Objectives: Rumination may contribute to depression by impairing the most effective allocation of time across activities. An experiment tested the role of rumination in time allocation across tasks. Methods: State rumination was manipulated by cueing an unresolved goal in one condition (32 participants) and cueing a resolved goal in another condition (32 participants). Trait rumination and depressive symptoms were also measured. All participants completed two word generation tasks and allocated a fixed overall time budget between the tasks by interleaving between them. Results: No difference was found in task performance or time allocation following the manipulation of state rumination. Self-reported rumination did not differ between conditions throughout the experimental task. Differences in time allocation behaviour were associated with trait rumination. Limitations: Use of a non-clinical population and tasks that are unrepresentative of everyday problem solving limited the generalisability of the results and may have limited the effect of the state rumination manipulation on task performance. Conclusions: The absence of a difference in self-reported rumination throughout the task suggests that either the word generation task reduced levels of rumination or that the level of rumination induced did not have a large effect on the cognitive processes required to complete the word generation task.

PURPOSE: Muscle overuse is characterized by inflammation, reduced strength and muscle damage. It has been proposed that calcium (Ca2+) accumulation during muscle contraction, is responsible for muscle damage. Muscle contractile properties are regulated by calcium regulatory excitation contraction coupling mechanisms. Therefore, the main aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of voluntary repetitive tasks during six weeks on the rate of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+-uptake, and Ca2+-release, in young female Sprague-Dawley rats. Secondly, this study aims to evaluate the effect of the training on muscular strength and the relationship between SR Ca2+-kinetics and grip strength test performance. METHODS: Six rats were trained (EXP), using a well-established model of reaching and handle pulling with the upper extremities (2 hr/day, 3days/week, 6 weeks), six control rats (KON) were included that were not exposed to the task. Grip strength were evaluated using a grip strength meter for rodents, two weeks prior the training was initiated, and two days after the training period was concluded. Tissue samples were obtained from the supraspinatus and trapezius muscle, and the rate of SR Ca2+-uptake and SR Ca2+-release were analysed using the fluorescent Ca2+ indicator indo 1. RESULTS: The analysis revealed that EXP had a significant higher rate of SR Ca2+-uptake, in both supraspinatus (33%, P < 0,05) and trapezius (14%, P < 0,05), compared to KON. However, no significant differences in SR Ca2+-release rate were found between groups, in neither of the muscles. A decline in grip strength were found in both EXP and KON, with no significant differences between groups. No significant correlation between grip strength and the Ca2+ release uptake variables could be found. CONCLUSION: The present results suggests that repetitive voluntary reaching and handle pulling with the upper extremities during six weeks, induce extant changes in SR Ca2+-uptake rate in rats.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The aims of this dissertation study are 1) to examine how the interplay of motivation, artifacts, and task interconnectedness affect users' flow experience, 2) to understand users' multitasking patterns by analyzing approaches and strategies in multitasking environments through a participatory design session, and 3) to come up with design insights and implications for desired multitasking environments based on findings from the quantitative and qualitative data analysis and synthesis. This dissertation employed the PAT (Person-Artifact-Task) model to examine factors that affect users' flow experience in computer-mediated multitasking environments. Particularly, this study focused on users' flow experience - sense of control, focused attention, curiosity, intrinsic interest and interactivity - in the context of multitasking. The dissertation begins with perspectives on human multitasking research from various disciplines. Emphasis is placed on how researchers have defined the term multitasking and the scope of previous multitasking research. In addition, this study provides definitions of the term task switching, which also has been used to describe human multitasking. The second section of this dissertation focuses on the literature, which characterizes factors and theoretical frameworks of human multitasking research. In this section, human multitasking factors were classified into internal and external factors to analyze factors from the micro to the macro perspective. More detailed definitions and comparisons are also addressed. To summarize and conclude the literature review, this study provides a synthesis framework of internal and external factors of human multitasking contexts. In section III, this dissertation introduces theoretical frameworks that include the constructs of the PAT (Person-Artifact-Task) model and flow model. The next three sections present the research design and two research methods - the experiment and participatory design. The results and discussion section includes the implications of interpreting people's flow experience with motivation, artifact (technology affordance type), and task interconnectedness through the PAT model. The study findings and implications should extend our understanding of multitasking behaviors and contexts and how the interplay of person, artifact, and task factors affects humans' flow experience. A concluding chapter explores future work and design implications on how researchers and designers can take contextual factors into consideration to identify the most effective multitasking in computer-mediated environments. / text

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This thesis explores the nature of linguistic introspection through the phenomenon known in the literature as the Syntactic Satiation Effect, where the perceived unacceptability of some syntactic structures is attenuated on repeated exposure. Recent findings suggest that rating change in experimental settings may not reveal the underlying grammatical status of syntactic objects by mitigating performance factors related to memory limitations, as initially proposed, but rather arise as a response bias conditioned by characteristics of some experimental designs, in effect introducing task-based performance factors. Findings from rating and reading times suggest that there is evidence supporting both accounts of rating change in experimental designs and highlights areas of development for the Experimental Syntax program. Exploring anecdotal reports, Snyder (2000) found that in as few as five exposures, participants found some types of wh-extraction anomaly (‘weak Islands’) significantly more acceptable at the end of the session compared to the beginning whereas others (‘strong Islands’) did not experience any rating improvement. Varied success in replicating initial results casts doubts on the proposal that rating data, experimentally elicited, can tease apart grammatical from performance sources of unacceptability. Sprouse (2009) suggests an alternative –Satiation arises as an artifact of a disproportionate number of ungrammatical to grammatical sentences in the testing session. This approach provides an explanation for the apparent mismatch in findings, but also highlights issues regarding the advances of experimental syntax: do experimental methods provide better data or do aspects of some designs systematically introduce extraneous influences themselves? Evidence from three rating and two self-paced reading tasks suggests that although robust evidence supporting the memory-based claim is not found, evidence that Satiation is strictly task-based is not substantiated either; sentences that satiate are similar across experiments. A novel observation is made that satiating sentences are also more readily interpretable than non-satiating sentences – providing some explanation for the apparent mismatch between Satiation studies, and also points to another source of variability associated with experimental approaches to linguistic intuition. In sum, evidence here underlines the composite nature of introspection, points areas of refinement for experimental techniques and advocates for the adoption of cross-methodological procedures to enhance syntactic investigation.