The thesis is to explore wireless location tracking algorithms based on geometric dilution of precision (GDOP) in the mobile environment. The GDOP can be used as an indication of positioning accuracy, affected by the geometric relationship between the target and sensing units. The smaller the GDOP is, the better positioning accuracy. By using the information of sensing units and time difference of arrival (TDOA) positioning method, we use extended Kalman filter as an estimator to track and predict the state of a moving target. From previous research, the lowest GDOP value, located at the center of a regular polygon, represents the best positioning accuracy in 2-D scenario with numerous sensing units. It is important to find the best locations for the sensing units. Simulated annealing algorithm was used in previous studies. However, it only finds a location at a time, and consumes computation load and time. Due to the above-mentioned reasons, we propose a location tracking system, which consists of a base traiver station and numerous mobile sensing units. By using the information of a base transceiver station and the predicted position of target, we can obtain the best locations for all the mobile sensing units with the calculation of rotation matrix. The locations can also be used as beacons for relocating mobile sensing units. It may take many cycles to move mobile sensing units to the best locations. We have to perform path planning for mobile sensing units. Due to the location change of the moving target, the routes need adjustment accordingly. If the predicted stay of a mobile sensing unit is inside the obstacle, we adjust the route of the mobile sensing unit to make it stay out of the obstacle. Therefore, we also propose a path planning scheme for mobile sensing units to avoid obstacles. Through simulations, the proposed method decreases the tracking time effectively, and find the best locations precisely. When mobile sensing units move toward the best locations, they successfully avoid obstacles and move toward the position with the minimum GDOP. Through the course, good positioning accuracy can be maintained.

Functional evaluation is one of key arithmetic operations in many applications including 3D graphics and stereo. Among various designs of hardware-based function evaluation methods, piecewise polynomial approximation is the most popular approach which interpolates the piecewise function curve in a sub-interval using polynomials with polynomial coefficients of each sub-interval stored in an entry of a lookup table ROM. The conventional piecewise methods usually determine the bit-widths of each ROM entry, multipliers, and adders by analyzing the various error sources, including polynomial approximation errors, coefficient quantization errors, truncation errors of arithmetic operations, and the final rounding error. In this thesis, we present a new piecewise function evaluation design by considering all the error sources together. By combining all the error sources during the approximation, quantization, truncation and rounding, we can efficiently reduce the area cost of ROM and the corresponding arithmetic units in the design of CORDIC processors.

Crop managers need to determine the most profitable time to defoliate cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) in a high rainfall environment such as the coastal region of Texas. In cotton production, delaying defoliation exposes open bolls to a higher probability of rainfall, and thus, reduces lint yield and fiber quality. Premature defoliation, however, has detrimental affects on lint yield and fiber quality. A more recent method to determine defoliation is based on heat-unit (HU or DD15) accumulation after physiological cutout or five nodes above white flower (NAWF=5). Results have been inconsistent across a wide range of field environments when utilizing HU accumulation past cutout; therefore, adoption of this method has been limited. Many regions of the Cotton Belt have maximum day time temperatures during the growing season that are above optimum for maximum growth. Field studies were conducted for three consecutive growing seasons in the Brazos River Valley and Upper Gulf Coast regions of Texas. The purpose of this research was to identify an upper temperature threshold (UTT) for calculating degree days for defoliation timing. The experimental design consisted of a split-plot design with four replications. The main plots consisted of three upper temperature thresholds (32°C, 35°C, and no upper limit) and the subplots were five HU timings (361, 417, 472, 528, and 583) accumulated from date of cutout. Utilizing an UTT to calculate daily HU failed to explain differences in the optimum time to defoliate based on accumulated HU from cutout for the upper thresholds investigated. Accumulated HU had a significant impact, however, on defoliation timing. Comparison of the two locations showed that maximum lint yield was obtained at 472 HU and 52% open boll at Wharton County versus a maximum of 528 HU and 62% open boll for the Burleson County location. Employing the NACB=4 method to time defoliation at both locations would have resulted in premature application of harvest aids and reduced lint yields. No differences were observed in adjusted gross income values at Wharton County among the 417, 472, 528, and 583 HU treatments. For Burleson County, adjusted gross income peaked in value at 528 HU.

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With the advances in very large scale integration (VLSI) technology, hardware is going parallel. Software, which was traditionally designed to execute on single core microprocessors, now faces the tough challenge of taking advantage of this parallelism, made available by the scaling of hardware. The work presented in this dissertation studies the acceleration of electronic design automation (EDA) software on several hardware platforms such as custom integrated circuits (ICs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and graphics processors. This dissertation concentrates on a subset of EDA algorithms which are heavily used in the VLSI design flow, and also have varying degrees of inherent parallelism in them. In particular, Boolean satisfiability, Monte Carlo based statistical static timing analysis, circuit simulation, fault simulation and fault table generation are explored. The architectural and performance tradeoffs of implementing the above applications on these alternative platforms (in comparison to their implementation on a single core microprocessor) are studied. In addition, this dissertation also presents an automated approach to accelerate uniprocessor code using a graphics processing unit (GPU). The key idea is to partition the software application into kernels in an automated fashion, such that multiple instances of these kernels, when executed in parallel on the GPU, can maximally benefit from the GPU?s hardware resources. The work presented in this dissertation demonstrates that several EDA algorithms can be successfully rearchitected to maximally harness their performance on alternative platforms such as custom designed ICs, FPGAs and graphic processors, and obtain speedups upto 800X. The approaches in this dissertation collectively aim to contribute towards enabling the computer aided design (CAD) community to accelerate EDA algorithms on arbitrary hardware platforms.

In the wake of changes in international politics and military situations, considerations for global and regional security have changed accordingly, and the nature of factors leading to conflicts and possible threat forms have also changed constantly. Amid in such new situations of global strategy, we should also view the security threats faced by Taiwan and national strategies of Taiwan from more broad perspectives and make necessary changes to them. Lien Chan, chairman of Kuomingtang, and James Soong, chairman of People First Party, visited China in late April 2005 and early May 2005 repectively, and talked with leaders of China and reached some points of consensus with them. However, China has still retained its policy to invade Taiwan with military forces and is still suffocating the survival space of Taiwan in international arena. China has adopted a measure ¡§political opposition, military confrontation,¡¨ which has proved the most serious threat to national security of Taiwan. Taking the role of world cop and in consideration of her interests in East Asia, the United States has deeply got involved in the peace and military security policies or actions in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan¡¦s political and economic situations and revolution in military affairs (RMA) have been constrained, intangibly and substantively, by China and the United States. It is natural for most Taiwanese people to think that Taiwan¡¦s budgets for defense and military construction will be more or less influenced by major political incidents that involve the United States, China, and Taiwan. In recent years, Taiwan has been an open society and people have been eager to speak out. The immense budgets of units of the Ministry of National Defense and secret examinations of confidential budgets have indirectly caused insufficient needs of Taiwanese people for the cognition of the budget structure for national defense. This discourse tries to investigate how China¡¦s policy of propaganda attacks and military threats to Taiwan, announcements of national security policies of the United States and China that have to do with Taiwan, and the delicate changes in major political events in Taiwan have influcenced the budgeting of Taiwan¡¦s national defense in recent ten years.

The aim of this thesis is to point out the critical position of University Continuing Education Units in the context of knowledge economy for their contribution to local development, and to analyse to what extent these units in the case of Turkey serve for this function. For this purpose, first, the nature of knowledge economy and transformations initiated in this process in labour markets and in nature of education are analysed. Next, new understanding of lifelong learning and restructuring process in universities, which are connected with transformation in these two fields, are discussed. Later, position of cities and importance of urban policy for local development within the context of knowledge economy is examined. Consequently, as a product of these intertwined transformations, it is revealed that University Continuing Education Units appear to be key actors for cities for their contribution to local development. Then, based on the facts developed in the theoretical arguments / data of University Continuing Education Units of Turkey and Middle East Technical University Continuing Education Center (METU CEC) scrutinised in order to reveal how far these units in Turkey serve for local development. Finally, findings and conclusions are summarised, and policy proposals are developed for University Continuing Education Units should follow in order to serve local development effectively.

A large number of hostelries have been established in Turkey in line with the necessities of our age. From the period of Seljuk and Ottoman, we encounter many variations of these facilities which have come up to our time starting from the caravansaries. Today, even though these facilities differ architecturally, conceptually they work in the same way. The common feature in almost every one is to keep the maintenance, establishment and repair costs at the minimum level. In addition to this, hotel facilities should be given importance to functionality and efficient flow in space. As a condition to this foresight, the design and organization of the floors where guestrooms are located in hotels are significant in both evaluating the fuctionality of these units and in examining the facilities architecturally. While designing a facility from the bottom up and creating it, the designer&rsquo / s knowledge on the planimetric configuration of the hotels built previously may lead the designer to different perspectives. Thus, it is so essential that how efficient these currently used facilities are shared among the guests, employers and the circulation areas should be investigated and the rational relations among these should be analyzed. In this study, the planimetric configuration of the floors where standard rooms of four-star hotels established on a single parcel in Cankaya district of the city of Ankara in Turkey is examined. In the study, 9 hotels carrying the features mentioned above were randomly selected from a sample space of 25 facilities. The architectural drawings of these structures were obtained from the relevant institutions and organizations. Data regarding area calculations and measurements made were made the investigator from these drawings. Based on these measurements, 3 different statistical tests were used in order to determine differentiations and similarities among the ratios depicted in chapter 3. These tests were stated as / regression analysis, t-tests and analysis of variance. Results showed that significant differences are obtained when the net usable areas are examined and classified according to the number of beds they have and no significant differences were obtained when the analysis made according to the other factors.

Uncorrupted political system is the basic criterion for the government policy. It affects the development of the whole country from political, economical and social perspectives. If the policy systems and the governors are corrupted, the credibility of the government will be decreased. Therefore, the whole country¡¦s administration and regulation will be in serious danger. Today, fighting for corruption is in the reforming stage, and every party in Taiwan all supports this policy. However, due to different political concerns, during the process of implementing the Sunshine Act, the original idea of fighting corruption has been contorted. Under this circumstance and in order to satisfy people¡¦s expectation, it is necessary to seriously concentrate on the problems of establishing an uncorrupted political system. In the nations with honest government systems, administrative supervision system is a very important segment. The system places administrative power under supervision and inspection controls. Within their independent and detached status and fair operation, administrative supervisory organs can have influential and powerful controls over the administrative departments and staff. Under this mechanism, a completely anti-corruption system and a reputation of honor government can be successfully established. This research made an in-depth study of the Control Yuan and the government employee ethics units as the major study subjects and combined with the supplementary administrative law materials to further examine the administrative supervision system in Taiwan. This research was mainly prepared with the use of literature analysis, comparative analysis and inductive analysis and has employed the basic theories of Administration Act, i.e. the five major structures of administrative principles, administrative organization, limit of administrative rights, administrative relief and administrative surveillance, as the research approaches of the study to examine the law of the administrative supervision system thoroughly. It is hoped that through the analysis of the Control Yuan and the government employee ethics units from the jural, institutional, and functional perspectives, this study would be able to provide the government an effective and practicable administrative supervision system.

The trend towards patient-and family-centered care (PFCC) invites families of critically ill patients to participate more fully in the care and recovery of their loved ones through partnerships with the medical team and personalized care that respects the values, beliefs and experiences of the individual. In response to the growing needs of families, healthcare institutions are re-designing the way patient and family care is delivered in terms of policy, culture and the physical environment. Despite the many benefits that come with closer collaboration, nurses report that "challenging" families are a key source of workplace stress. This exploratory case study documents some of these challenges as perceived by staff nurses at Emory University Hospital's Neuro ICU while examining the role the built environment plays in shaping such perceptions. Through a series of ethnographic interviews and observational methodologies, the study identifies some of the challenges and benefits that come with balancing patient and family needs. Nurse strategies developed to reassert spatial and temporal control over work environments are also identified. The second phase of research compares communication patterns generated from two different ICUs to explore the link between unit design and the frequency and quality of nurse-family interactions. Findings suggest that space plays a role in moderating the degree of nurse exposure to the often unstructured and unpredictable aspects of family interactions. These encounters, set within a highly charged critical care setting, may contribute to these perceived challenges. Healthcare stands at an important moment of transition in which attitudes, behaviors and expectations are changing. Together these results reinforce the need for adequate tools, training and education to further support nurses in the transition to this new care culture.