<p>In a real-time system, it is crucial to ensure that all tasks of the system holdtheir deadlines. A missed deadline in a real-time system means that the systemhas not been able to function correctly. If the system is safety critical, this canlead to disaster. To ensure that all tasks keep their deadlines, the Worst-CaseExecution Time (WCET) of these tasks has to be known. This can be done bymeasuring the execution times of a task, however, this is inflexible, time consumingand in general not safe (i.e., the worst-casemight not be found). Unlessthe task is measured with all possible input combinations and configurations,which is in most cases out of the question, there is no way to guarantee that thelongest measured time actually corresponds to the real worst case.Static analysis analyses a safe model of the hardware together with thesource or object code of a program to derive an estimate of theWCET. This estimateis guaranteed to be equal to or greater than the real WCET. This is doneby making calculations which in all steps make sure that the time is exactlyor conservatively estimated. In many cases, however, the execution time of atask or a program is highly dependent on the given input. Thus, the estimatedworst case may correspond to some input or configuration which is rarely (ornever) used in practice. For such systems, where execution time is highly inputdependent, a more accurate timing analysis which take input into considerationis desired.In this thesis we present a framework based on abstract interpretation andcounting of possible semantic states of a program. This is a general methodof WCET analysis, which is language independent and platform independent.The two main applications of this framework are a loop bound analysis and aparametric analysis. The loop bound analysis can be used to quickly find upperbounds for loops in a program while the parametric framework provides aninput-dependent estimation of theWCET. The input-dependent estimation cangive much more accurate estimates if the input is known at run-time.</p> / PROGRESS

<p>The idea of common morality is not a new idea. Philosophers have been engaged with it from the very early days. Many modern philosophers intend to perceive it when they compare or contrast it with the implications of ethical theories for genuine understanding of moral facts. They believe that without having any reference to what common people think, believe and practice, it is preposterous to construct a complete set of abstract norms and postulate them as relevant to practical life. In this work, proceeding with a motive of understanding the characteristic strength of common morality and to see how meaningfully we can designate the relevance of common moral beliefs in our applied ethical discussion, I am basically exploring two different accounts common morality view. The first one is the universalistic account which emerges from the works or Bernard Gert and Tom Beauchamp (including their colleagues), and the other one, I believe, sets its journey from the wombs of the critics of the first one. In this work, in order to properly designate the relevance of common morality, I am intending to develop the second account.</p>

The application field for static analysis of Java programs is getting broader, ranging from compiler optimizations (like dynamic dispatch elimination) to security issues. Many of those analyses include type analyses. We propose a `generic' framework, which improves on previous type analyses by introducing structural information. Moreover, structural information allows us to easily extend the framework to perform many different kinds of analyses. The framework is based on the abstract interpretation methodology. It is composed of a standard semantics, a family of abstract domains, an abstract semantics based on these domains and a post-fixpoint algorithm to compute the abstract semantics. The analysis is limited to a representative subset of Java, without concurrency. A complete prototype of the framework allows us to illustrate the accuracy and the efficiency of the approach (for moderately sized programs).

The Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees (UCT) has become extremely popular in computer games research. Because of the importance of this family of algorithms, a deeper understanding of when and how their different enhancements work is desirable. To avoid hard-to-analyze intricacies of tournament-level programs in complex games, this work focuses on a simple abstract game: Sum of Switches (SOS). In the SOS environment we measure the performance of UCT and two of popular enhancements: Score Bonus and the Rapid Action Value Estimation (RAVE) heuristic. RAVE is often a strong estimator, but there are some situations where it misleads a search. To mimic such situations, two different error models for RAVE are explored: random error and systematic bias. We introduce a new, more robust version of RAVE called RAVE-max to better cope with errors.

The idea of common morality is not a new idea. Philosophers have been engaged with it from the very early days. Many modern philosophers intend to perceive it when they compare or contrast it with the implications of ethical theories for genuine understanding of moral facts. They believe that without having any reference to what common people think, believe and practice, it is preposterous to construct a complete set of abstract norms and postulate them as relevant to practical life. In this work, proceeding with a motive of understanding the characteristic strength of common morality and to see how meaningfully we can designate the relevance of common moral beliefs in our applied ethical discussion, I am basically exploring two different accounts common morality view. The first one is the universalistic account which emerges from the works or Bernard Gert and Tom Beauchamp (including their colleagues), and the other one, I believe, sets its journey from the wombs of the critics of the first one. In this work, in order to properly designate the relevance of common morality, I am intending to develop the second account.

Dawn Jones's sorority sisters thought she made a big mistake marrying blue-collar Reginald. But thanks to hard work and belief in each other, Dawn and Reginald left the big city and made their own happiness, complete with a comfortable home and two lively children. Dawn can't wait to show everyone just how perfect her choices were—especially when her mega-successful best friend, Sasha, shows up to visit. But she never expected Sasha would like Reginald so much she'd steal him for herself. . .or that Reginald would see Sasha as a second chance to pursue hopes he never fulfilled. With her perfect life now in shambles, Dawn will do whatever it takes to regain what she's lost. But the road back will mean facing the hardest of truths, even tougher choices—and risking more than she ever imagined to discover what her life could really be.

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-54). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This following is a study on abstract painting: the critical reception and analysis of painterly practice--performative, experimental, dissenting--in New York from 1936 to 1951. By metonymy, this study also looks at the figure in the political realm via the critiques offered by socially-oriented critics at this time (some of whom were also art critics). As the boundless secondary literature on this period has noted, the painting of the New York School would "triumph" with "stunning success" by the late 1950s. In other regards, the subject of this dissertation is that of failure. The revolution (or, "the idea of Revolution") that had been hoped for by so many left-wing radicals in the 1930s never quite came to pass or, later, went horribly wrong: first in Spain and then elsewhere. "Modern art, like modern literature and modern life," Clement Greenberg concluded in a 1948 essay on the Old Masters "has lost much." Greenberg's essay on the Old Masters appeared in the same number of Partisan Review as Hannah Arendt's essay, "The Concentration Camps." This is the generation of critics, intellectuals and artists who bore the brunt of articulating the unspeakable horrors of the Camps and the Bomb--manmade places and events that were "beyond human comprehension." This study is also about belief, of kinds: a Modernist belief in the agency of the artist, in the discernment of the critic, and of a "superstitious regard for print," to which Greenberg referred with irony in a 1957 essay (artists didn't always believe what they read, he would conclude). Irving Howe, the founder of Dissent in 1954, supposedly once quipped that, "when intellectuals can do nothing else, they start a magazine." The dissertation at hand contains a number of kinds of critical statements: ones of ambiguity and of skepticism, and others of crisis and disinterest, directed towards art objects and elsewhere, and expressed by writers at mid-century, some especially subtle and acute. Modernist belief, even if betrayed too often, allowed these critics often to escape velleities, or other empty gestures, in their writing.

Šiame magistro darbe analizuojamos ontologinės ir struktūrinės metaforos, atrinktos iš Daiktavardinių frazių žodyno, kuris sudarytas iš stabiliųjų žodžių junginių (kolokacijų) ir frazių, kuriose pavartotas bent vienas daiktavardis. Kadangi abstrakčiųjų daiktavardžių kolokacijos yra kalbinių metaforų išraiška, dėl to ir pasinaudota minėtu žodynu. Darbe gana išsamiai pristatyta tiek kolokacijos, tiek metaforos teorija. Apsistota ties konceptualiąja metafora. Laikomasi ir pritariama kognityvinės lingvistikos atstovų suformuluotai nuostatai, kad žmogaus konceptualioji sistema, į kurią įeina mąstymas, suvokimas, kalba, atmintis, yra iš prigimties metaforiška. Aprašius atrankos būdus ir kriterijus atrinktos ontologinės, kurios abstrakcijoms suteikia objekto ar substancijos pavidalą, sudaiktina, sumedžiagina jas, ir struktūrinės, kuriose gana aiškiai tam tikri konkretaus koncepto bruožai suteikiami abstrakčiajam, metaforos suskirstytos į semantines grupes: struktūrinės pagal tai, kokiu konkrečiu daiktu konceptualizuojami abstraktai, ontologinės – kokia konkretaus daikto savybe metaforizuojami abstraktai. Šios kiekvienos rūšies metaforos grupės skilo į dar smulkesnes semantines grupes. Išanalizavus konceptualiąsias struktūrines metaforas paaiškėjo, kad abstraktas gali būti konceptualizuojamas ir agregatinės medžiagos būsena – skysčiu, ir labai konkrečiu daiktu: taure, bagažu, skraiste. Šios metaforos įdomios tuo, kad pasirenkamu labai konkrečiu daiktu konceptualizuojami abstraktai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Present research is based on ontological and structural metaphors, manually extracted from the Dictionary of Lithuanian Nominal Phrases. The dictionary is compiled from collocations, automatically extracted from the Corpus of Present Day Lithuanian Language. All collocations contain at least one noun. The dictionary is a suitable source for the extraction of metaphors since it contains a lot of abstract noun collocations that in most cases are metaphorical. The paper presents theoretical approaches towards both issues unders analysis, i.e. metaphors and collocations. The specific object of investigation, however, is conceptual, or dead, metaphor. It is defined here as a linguistic expression of a conceptual model of a world view. Following the cognitive approach it is assumed that human conceptual system, comprising cognition, language and memory, is metaphorical in nature. After presenting the identification criteria and procedures, the outcome of analysis is presented, i.e. ontological and structural metaphors. Ontological metaphors are described as those which allow to concieve an abstract concept as a concrete tangible object or substance. Structural metaphors give a more specified and clear-cut associations with an object or entity. Both types of methaphors under analysis are subclassified according to their semantic features. In the case of ontological metaphors a semantic feature reveals just one property of an entity, in the case of structural metaphors a semantic... [to full text]

The completed research allows to conclude that abstract expression holds a key importance in the process of art tuition. Its influence on children visual reflection is determined by a number of factors: the development of student's thinking process, his individual character, visual reflection forms, relevant teaching methods and valuation of student's works. This research describes the techniques the tutor uses for the purpose to understand the student, best reveal his unique inner capabilities and skills and facilitate their development. In early age, when children only start to realize the principals of abstract art, they create abstract compositions on playing grounds. Their creativity, active imagination, thinking capabilities and intuition expand and improve on the way. In upper grades, when the attractiveness of drawing and working as a process fades out, the weight of drawing result continually increases. This is the age when children lose the joy of spontaneous creation, while the attempt at realistic expression encounters an essential lack of skills. Children are willing to be taught and they seek definite rules. Still they cannot generalize consciously, therefore the most appropriate tasks are design of ornaments out of geometrical figures, lines and colours. This way they get acquainted with the means of abstract expression in art, and these provide a positive impulse for the enhancement of creative capabilities and overall personality maturing. 14 – 18 years... [to full text]