Aujourd'hui, les plates-formes hétérogènes et partagées que sont les grilles de calcul sont omniprésentes. De plus, le besoin d'exécuter des applications parallèles complexes est croissant. Cette thèse vise à ordonnancer des applications représentées par des graphes de tâches modelables (dont le nombre de processeurs est fixé par l'ordonnanceur) sur des grilles de calcul en exploitant le maximum de parallélisme, utilisant efficacement les ressources, gérant l'hétérogénéité et le partage des ressources. Nous avons pour cela opté pour des heuristiques pragmatiques car, bien qu'elles n'offrent pas de garantie de performance, elles peuvent néanmoins conduire à de bonnes performances moyennes tout en construisant des ordonnancements en des temps relativement courts. La plupart des heuristiques existantes n'ordonnancent les applications parallèles mixtes qu'en milieu homogène et utilisent parfois inefficacement les ressources. Nous avons donc tout d'abord étudié différentes heuristiques dans le cas de plates-formes homogènes et proposé des améliorations visant à améliorer le compromis entre réduction du temps de complétion et efficacité. Nous avons ensuite introduit la gestion de l'hétérogénéité dans l'heuristique proposée et comparé ses performances à celles d'un algorithme garanti. Enfin, nous avons tenu compte du caractère partagé des grilles en gérant la concurrence entre applications. L'approche retenue consiste à limiter la quantité de ressources que chaque application peut utiliser pour construire son ordonnancement. Nous avons également proposé plusieurs stratégies de détermination de cette contrainte de ressources.

Les dispositifs de numérisation de trajectoire font progressivement leurs apparitions afin de permettre la quantification de la trajectoire d'un mouvement dans une scène afin de répondre à différents besoins pour des applications variées. Elles sont potentiellement nombreuses et peuvent être déclinées en 5 familles : loisirs, simulation pour l'industrie, applications médicales, applications liées aux sports et la robotique. Parmi les axes de progression, la suppression des phases de réglages et d'équipement ainsi que la limitation de l'usage de marqueurs actifs contraignants, constituent un nouveau challenge. Les techniques optiques offrent l'opportunité de réaliser des mesures sans contacts. La mesure de lumière est rendue possible à l'aide d'un transducteur électronique qui convertit une énergie ou une puissance optique absorbée en une grandeur électrique. A l'aide d'un traitement approprié, la distance peut être évaluée. Pour l'application recherchée, c'est-à-dire pour des interactions sur plusieurs mètres avec une précision inférieure au centimètre, les méthodes de télémétrie les plus adéquates sont la triangulation, la mesure de phase et éventuellement, la mesure par temps de vol à lumière pulsée constituant un autre compromis intéressant entre complexité et précision. Le concept exploré en détail dans un premier temps, consiste à remplacer les moteurs galvanométriques, onéreux et impliquant des éléments mécaniques à haute dynamiques, par un dispositif de scrutation local basé sur un réseau de sources lasers. Cette approche multi-faisceaux donne une première mesure de position de la cible sans la nécessité de générer un mouvement à cet organe. Afin d'élargir le champ de mesure, un second dispositif prend le relai permettant d'atteindre un volume sphérique. C'est le concept de combinaison mesure locale et mesure globale que nous proposons dans ces travaux de thèse. Cette approche hybride contribue à l'effort de coût avec cependant une dégradation de la précision mais une simplification du dispositif et de ses cibles. Au-delà de cet exemple, différentes autres possibilités de combinaison de mesures globales et locales sont envisageables en fonction des choix technologiques. Chacune d'entre elles possède des spécificités qui vont se traduire sous forme de forces et de faiblesses en fonction des besoins. L'usage d'une matrice de micro-miroir DMD ainsi que d'autres procédés de micro-fabrication représentent des voies d'innovation prometteuses afin de réduire les difficiles compromis entre performances, coût et facilité d'utilisation.

This study aims to develop a method for more clearly understanding the topics that applicants choose when writing their college or university application essay. As such, the purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, to analyze the unstudied volume of advice and guidance available to applicants on the World Wide Web, this study will analyze the guidance that is available to motivate and guide applicants as they embark on writing their essay. Second, this study examines the college application essay and will create a categorization of the application essay topics on which a select group of applicants chose to write. The purpose is not to evaluate the applicant or their demographics, nor is it to suggest “best practices” for college applicants to follow when writing their essays. Furthermore, as an examination of popular media and of narrative expression, this analysis does not attempt to reveal a causal link between media and the resulting narratives. Instead, this inductive analysis develops a baseline theory that begins a discussion of the application essay and the multitude of information that might guide its creation. The motivation for this study is grounded in the following: 1) many colleges and universities employ selective practices in their admissions process and they consider the application essay to be a helpful tool in selecting from among otherwise academically eligible students; 2) applicants consider the essay to be one of the most challenging and unfamiliar aspects of the application; and 3) a multi-million-dollar industry has developed to assist students with college and university applications. This research supports prior studies that indicate that the writing of college application essays (or personal statements) is in fact as Paley (1996) suggests an exercise in a rhetorical conundrum. Applicants emerge from the angst and confusion of how to approach and what to write about in their college application essay to produce a work that reveals personal characteristics that they think are important to college admissions officers and that they hope, will ultimately, result in admission to their institution of choice. / text

The microelectronics industry has been managing the RC delay problem arising from aggressive line scaling, by replacing aluminum (Al) by copper (Cu) and oxide dielectric by low-k dielectric. Electromigration (EM) turned out to be a serious reliability problem for Cu interconnects due to the implementation of mechanically weaker low-k dielectrics. In addition, line width and via size scaling resulted in the need of a novel diffusion barrier, which should be uniform and thin. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the impacts of Ta barrier process, such as barrier-first and pre-clean first, and scaling of barrier and line/via on EM reliability of Cu/low-k interconnects. For this purpose, EM statistical test structures, having different number of line segments, line width, and via width, were designed. The EM test structures were fabricated by a dualdamascene process with two metal layers (M1/Via/M2), which were then packaged for EM tests. The package-level EM tests were performed in a specially designed vacuum chamber with pure nitrogen environment. The novel barrier deposition process, called barrier-first, showed a higher (jL)[subscript c] product and prolonged EM lifetime, compared with the conventional Ta barrier deposition process, known as pre-clean first. This can be attributed to the improved uniformity and thickness of the Ta layer on the via and trench, as confirmed by TEM. As for the barrier thickness effect, the (jL)c product decreased with decreasing thickness, due to reduced Cu confinement. A direct correlation between via size and EM reliability was found; namely, EM lifetime and statistics degraded with via size. This can be attributed to the fact that critical void length to cause open circuit is about the size of via width. To investigate further line scaling effect on EM reliability, SiON (siliconoxynitride) trenchfilling process was introduced to fabricate 60-nm lines, corresponding to 45-nm technology, using a conventional, wider line lithograph technology. The EM lifetime of 60-nm fine lines with SiON filling was longer than that of a standard damascene structure, which can be attributed to a distinct via/metal-1 configuration in reducing process-induced defects at the via/metal-1 interface. / text

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Electron transport in nanoparticle single-electron transistors (SETs) is a fruitful method to explore a wide range of physical phenomena at the nanometer scale. In this thesis, we investigate electron transport in SETs incorporating various nanoparticles, including gold nanoparticles in both classical and quantum regimes and Pb nanoparticle in both superconducting and normal states. SETs have been successfully fabricated by incorporating individual gold nanoparticles into the gaps between two electrodes. Although single-electron tunneling behavior is prominent, quantized energy levels cannot be resolved in these SETs due to their relatively large particle sizes. A novel method has been developed to achieve SETs incorporating gold nanoparticles whose sizes are small enough to resolve discrete quantum energy levels. The devices consist of spontaneously-formed ultrasmall gold nanoparticles linked by alkanedithiols to gold electrodes. The devices reproducibly exhibit addition energies of a few hundred meV, which enables the observation of single electron tunneling at room temperature. At low temperatures, resonant tunneling through discrete energy levels in the Au nanoparticles is observed, which is accompanied by the excitations of molecular vibrations at large bias voltage. Having explored the SETs in normal state, we have extended the experiments to superconducting single-electron transistors (SSETs). We first fabricated and characterized Pb superconducting electrodes with nanometer-sized separation. Our observation clearly shows that conventional Barden-Cooper-Schrieffer theory remains valid to interpret the tunneling behavior between two nanometer-spaced Pb electrodes. Furthermore, by incorporating Pb nanoparticles between the two Pb electrodes, we have fabricated SSETs and investigated the transport properties of these devices. In the superconducting state, the conductance is suppressed by a combination of the single electron tunneling effect and the absence of density of states within the superconducting gap. In the suppression regime, the tunneling spectroscopy shows current features that arise from quasiparticle tunneling caused by singularity matching. At low temperature, the features can only be observed for odd charge states in SSETs. At high temperature, the odd-even parity effect is smeared out. Upon application of a magnetic field, the superconducting state is suppressed and single-electron tunneling behavior for normal metallic nanoparticles is recovered.

Advertising is moving from a more traditional, paid placement into a new digital and mobile era. Companies are trying to figure out how to reach consumers in new ways, and emerging technologies are assisting. Branded mobile applications are one way that companies are working to build brand image and advertise in an innovative way. In this research, twelve in-depth interviews were conducted to find out what consumers may want, look for, and expect from a branded mobile application. Secondary research was also conducted to find out how brands are leveraging these new technologies and what consumers can look for in the future of mobile advertising. After reading this paper, the reader will have further knowledge of what consumers are seeking in mobile branded applications and how to obtain and keep their attention with a mobile application. / text

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Mobile payments is a topic that is gaining increased attention in both research and in the media. Trends have been identified that show an increase in the use of both smartphones and mobile applications. At the same time there has been a decrease in cash use, with a move towards alternative cashless means of payment in Sweden. Existing research has focused on this type of trend research and also looking at mobile payments in a general sense. There is a gap in the research where the acceptance of mobile payment applications are receiving very little to no attention. The purpose of this thesis is then to identify the determinants of the acceptance of mobile payment applications. Using existing Technology Acceptance Model research on mobile payments, 13 hypotheses were proposed that all related to various factors of acceptance of mobile payment applications. A questionnaire was constructed to test these hypotheses and distributed using convenience sampling. The hypotheses and questionnaire was used to construct a conceptual model in AMOS, where we subsequently used multiple regression analysis to analyze the gathered data. This resulted in 6 hypotheses being accepted and 7 hypotheses being rejected. The factors that was shown to have a significant effect on the acceptance of mobile payment applications, ranging from largest effect to the least are: attitude towards using mobile payment applications, perceived usefulness of mobile payment applications, the subjective norm of the individual, perceived ease of use of the mobile payment application, perceived credibility of the mobile payment application and perceived compatibility of the mobile payment application.

Les thèmes principaux de ce mémoire sont la parcimonie et la discrimination pour la modélisation de données complexes. Dans une première partie de ce mémoire, nous nous plaçons dans un contexte de modèle de mélanges gaussiens: nous introduisons une nouvelle famille de modèles probabilistes qui simultanément classent et trouvent un espace discriminant tel que cet espace discrimine au mieux les groupes. Une famille de 12 modèles latents discriminants (DLM) modèles est introduite et se base sur trois idées: tout d'abord, les données réelles vivent dans un sous-espace latent de dimension intrinsèque plus petite que celle de l'espace observé; deuxièmement, un sous-espace de K-1 dimensions est suffisant pour discriminer K groupes; enfin, l'espace observé et celui latent sont liés par une transformation linéaire. Une procédure d'estimation, appelée Fisher-EM, est proposée et améliore la plupart du temps les performances de clustering grâce à l'utilisation du sous-espace discriminant. Dans un second travail, nous nous sommes intéressés à la détermination du nombre de groupes en utilisant le cadre de la sériation. nous proposons d'intégrer de la parcimonie dans les données par l'intermédiaire d'une famille de matrices binaires. Ces dernière sont construites à partir d'une mesure de dissimilarité basée sur le nombre de voisins communs entre paires d'observations. En particulier, plus le nombre de voisins communs imposé est important, plus la matrice sera parcimonieuse, i.e. remplie de zéros, ce qui permet, à mesure que le seuil de parcimonie augmente, de retirer les valeurs extrêmes et les données bruitées. Cette collection de matrices parcimonieuses est ordonnée selon un algorithme de sériation de type forward, nommé PB-Clus, afin d'obtenir des représentations par blocs des matrices sériées. Ces deux méthodes ont été validées sur une application biologique basée sur la détection du cancer du col de l'utérus.