<p>A scene containing dynamic fluids can be created in a number of ways. There are two approaches that will highlight the problems and obstacles that might occur. Today’s leading fluid simulator, RealFlow, simulates the fluid dynamics. A comparison between the two approaches will be made and are analyzed. Through experimentation, one of the approaches fails to produce the set requirements in the experiment and furthermore the two approaches differ in efficiency.</p>

<p>This project aims to describe how workflow systems can integrate and make use of context information from context rich environments, to enhance the execution of workflow processes. Context information can for example be used to control transitions between activities, activity enactment and process/activity coordination. A dynamic contextual environment also requires that a workflow system is capable of responding to contextual events. A set of requirements for a context-aware workflow system, based on existing workflow standards, theory behind context-aware computing and activity theory, will be presented and elaborated. Prototypes, which illustrate how these requirements can be implemented in a standard based workflow system, are also provided. Based on the solutions presented in the prototypes, a new interface for a workflow enactment service is presented. This new interface serves as the link between the contextual environment and the workflow system. We also present a solution for handling context related exception states. The definition of basic terms in workflow systems are expanded to better support context-aware behaviour. Ideas and solutions for more complex requirements not met in our prototypes are also discussed, such as situated activity coordination.</p>

This project aims to describe how workflow systems can integrate and make use of context information from context rich environments, to enhance the execution of workflow processes. Context information can for example be used to control transitions between activities, activity enactment and process/activity coordination. A dynamic contextual environment also requires that a workflow system is capable of responding to contextual events. A set of requirements for a context-aware workflow system, based on existing workflow standards, theory behind context-aware computing and activity theory, will be presented and elaborated. Prototypes, which illustrate how these requirements can be implemented in a standard based workflow system, are also provided. Based on the solutions presented in the prototypes, a new interface for a workflow enactment service is presented. This new interface serves as the link between the contextual environment and the workflow system. We also present a solution for handling context related exception states. The definition of basic terms in workflow systems are expanded to better support context-aware behaviour. Ideas and solutions for more complex requirements not met in our prototypes are also discussed, such as situated activity coordination.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are miniaturized devices with high functionality. In recent years, MEMS products have become increasingly dominant in every aspect of the commercial market place. As the MEMS technology is in its infant stage and has several unique features compared to macro-scale products, it is faced with several challenges. One of them is that design and fabrication knowledge is very intrigue and thus very difficult to be accessible. An effective computer support to the MEMS product development is thus very important. This thesis study undertakes a thorough investigation into the MEMS product development process and its computer support. Specifically, the study examines the state-of-the-art in computer aided design systems in light of the support of product functionality. It is shown that MEMS product development involves high degree of uncertainty, which calls for an unconventional computer support. At this point, this study proposes an approach to construct a knowledge base in a fairly flexible and real-time manner. This approach is based on the extended function-behavior-structure framework and the template technique proposed in this thesis. The other finding is that the MEMS product development resembles the one-of-a-kind product (OKP) development. Therefore software tools for the OKP product development process can be applied to the MEMS product development process. These tools are examined, and further extensions upon them are proposed. Throughout the thesis, a microdispensing system is used as an example for illustration of concepts described in this thesis.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are miniaturized devices with high functionality. In recent years, MEMS products have become increasingly dominant in every aspect of the commercial market place. As the MEMS technology is in its infant stage and has several unique features compared to macro-scale products, it is faced with several challenges. One of them is that design and fabrication knowledge is very intrigue and thus very difficult to be accessible. An effective computer support to the MEMS product development is thus very important. This thesis study undertakes a thorough investigation into the MEMS product development process and its computer support. Specifically, the study examines the state-of-the-art in computer aided design systems in light of the support of product functionality. It is shown that MEMS product development involves high degree of uncertainty, which calls for an unconventional computer support. At this point, this study proposes an approach to construct a knowledge base in a fairly flexible and real-time manner. This approach is based on the extended function-behavior-structure framework and the template technique proposed in this thesis. The other finding is that the MEMS product development resembles the one-of-a-kind product (OKP) development. Therefore software tools for the OKP product development process can be applied to the MEMS product development process. These tools are examined, and further extensions upon them are proposed. Throughout the thesis, a microdispensing system is used as an example for illustration of concepts described in this thesis.

Das Ziel dieser experimentellen Studie war es die Techniken der konventionell laparo¬skopischen Fundoplikatio nach Nissen (CLNF) und der roboter-assistierten Fundoplikatio nach Nissen (RANF), wovon erstere derzeit als Standard der operativen Therapie der gastro¬ösophagealen Refluxkrankheit (GERD) im Kindesalter gilt, anhand workflow-analytischer Vergleichskriterien objektiv zu evaluieren. An jeweils zwölf weiblichen infantilen Schweinen (Rasse: Sus scrofa domestica, Gewicht: 7-10,8 kg, Alter: 6-8 Wochen) wurde respektive eine CLNF oder RANF durchgeführt, die postoperativ mittels Workflow-Analyse sowohl quantitativ als auch qualitativ in Hinsicht auf Geschwindigkeit, Sicherheit, Genauigkeit und Effizienz verglichen wurde. Dafür benutzten wir ein zuvor von uns entwickeltes Modul einer computer-assistierten Workflow-Erhebung, das speziell auf die Operationstechnik der Fundoplikatio nach Nissen ausgerichtet wurde. Nach Segmentierung des chirurgischen Workflows in spezielle Phasen konnten die zur Komplettierung vorab definierter Aktionen benötigten Zeiten mit Hilfe des Student’s t-Tests verglichen werden. Die Qualität des Knoten-Knüpfens wurde anhand eines speziellen Punktesystems beurteilt, die Effizienz der Fundoplikatio mittels Messung des Kardia-Öffnungsdruckes (Cardia yield pressure - CYP). Entgegen einer Zeitersparnis beim Knüpfen der Knoten in der RANF-Gruppe erwies sich die Qualität des Knüpfens in der CLNF-Gruppe als hochwertiger. In der durchschnittlichen Dauer der einzelnen Operationsphasen und dem Anstieg des CYP zeigte sich kein signifikanter Unterschied, wohingegen induzierte Pneumothoraces bei der CLNF verglichen mit der RANF öfter auftraten, allerdings Nähte in der RANF-Gruppe häufiger rissen. Trotz beschleunigtem Knoten-Knüpfens und reduzierter Inzidenz von Pneumothoraces, konnte die Technik der RANF in unserem experimentellen Tiermodell hinsichtlich der Effizienz der jeweiligen Operationstechnik nicht durch signifikante Vorteile überzeugen.

One of the major issues faced by Web applications is the management of evolving of data. In this thesis, we consider this problem and in particular the evolution of active documents. Active documents is a formalism describing the evolution of XML documents by activating Web services calls included in the document. It has already been used in the context of the management of distributed data \cite{axml}. The main contributions of this thesis are theoretical studies motivated by two systems for managing respectively stream applications and workflow applications. In a first contribution, we study the problem of view maintenance over active documents. The results served as the basis for an implementation of stream processors based on active documents called Axlog widgets. In a second one, we see active documents as the core of data centric workflows and consider various ways of expressing constraints on the evolution of documents. The implementation, called Axart, validated the approach of a data centric workflow system based on active documents. The hidden Web (also known as deep or invisible Web), that is, the partof the Web not directly accessible through hyperlinks, but through HTMLforms or Web services, is of great value, but difficult to exploit. Wediscuss a process for the fully automatic discovery, syntacticand semantic analysis, and querying of hidden-Web services. We proposefirst a general architecture that relies on a semi-structured warehouseof imprecise (probabilistic) content. We provide a detailed complexityanalysis of the underlying probabilistic tree model. We describe how wecan use a combination of heuristics and probing to understand thestructure of an HTML form. We present an original use of a supervisedmachine-learning method, namely conditional random fields,in an unsupervised manner, on an automatic, imperfect, andimprecise, annotation based on domain knowledge, in order to extractrelevant information from HTML result pages. So as to obtainsemantic relations between inputs and outputs of a hidden-Web service, weinvestigate the complexity of deriving a schema mapping between databaseinstances, solely relying on the presence of constants in the twoinstances. We finally describe a model for the semantic representationand intensional indexing of hidden-Web sources, and discuss how toprocess a user's high-level query using such descriptions.

Past studies of cohesiveness-performance effects thriving from 1950¡¦s were mainly experimental studies and the results of whether group cohesiveness contributed to performance were always disputable. Researchers believed that the construct of cohesiveness was multidimensional; and the components of cohesiveness were therefore scrutinized to see its influence upon performance. Results varied from only task commitment contributed to performance (Mullen & Copper, 1994) to all three components bear significant influence to performance (Beal et al., 2003). Not only was the cohesiveness-performance relation discussed, but were cohesiveness components to performance criteria and work patterns as a moderator to cohesiveness-performance relation examined in Taiwanese work groups. Consequently, the purposes of this study are to (a) have empirical study for cohesiveness-performance effect in real groups, (b) reexamine the influences of the three components of cohesiveness to cohesiveness-performance effect in work groups, (c) know which cohesiveness component brings about each kind of members performance, and (d) figure out how each type of workflows relates to cohesiveness- performance effect. This study represented work groups¡¦ cohesiveness- performance relation. Furthermore, cohesion components to performance criteria were reexamined for better understanding of which component can substantially benefit to which kind of performance. As a result, interpersonal attraction led to group members¡¦ behaviors performance, and task commitment brought about group efficiency. Last, this study helped to realize the fact that work groups were cohesive disregarding how much interdependence the job required.

Facing the increasing global competition, modern business organizations have to respond quickly and correctly to the constant changing environment to ensure their competitive advantages. This goal has led to a recent surge of work on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Workflow Management. While most work in these areas assume that process definitions are known in a priori, it is widely recognized that defining a process type which totally represents all properties of the underlying business process is a difficult job. This job is currently practiced in a very ad-hoc fashion. In this paper, we postulate an algorithm to discover the process definition from analyzing the existing process instances. We compare our algorithm with other existing algorithms proposed in the literature in terms of time complexity and apply these algorithms through synthetic data sets to measure the qualities of output results. It has been found that our algorithm is able to return the process definitions closer to the real ones in a faster manner.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Biomedical Informatics)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2009. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.