A informática tem um amplo campo de atuação e sua evolução não tem sido apenas em direção à conquista de mais capacidade de memória e velocidade, mas principalmente no que tange aos três elementos básicos da comunicação: emissor, mensagem e receptor. As interfaces estão sendo otimizadas para que os usuários aumentem suas condições de concepção de projetos e diminuam o tempo necessário para adquirir conhecimento técnico e habilidade no manuseio. Sem dúvida, o computador ainda é motivo de travamento da fluidez do pensamento e ação sobre o mesmo, afinal investem-se tempo e memória para o aprendizado do manual de instrução ou tutoriais, se assim preferirem. Diante deste contexto em que todos se vêem acoplados a vários sistemas computacionais complexos, o recorte para este trabalho restringiu-se a um pequeno universo referente ao aprendizado da computação gráfica no curso de Arquitetura e Desenho Industrial da Faculdade de Artes Plásticas da Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado FAAP. Não houve a pretensão de se aprofundar a análise na área de ensino e aprendizado por falta de tempo para o domínio de um conhecimento no assunto, mas a essência é o alerta para os profissionais do ensino superior, no caso o curso de Arquitetura, se conscientizarem do amplo espectro de possibilidades de recursos computacionais como ferramenta didática para a concepção de modelos explorativos objetivando um aumento no tempo da investigação. / Information Technology provides a large range and its development is not only to improve memory and speed capacity but mainly to get the three basic principles of connection : sender, message and receiver. Interfaces have been optimized for users to add their possibilities of projects conceiving and to shorten the necessary time to acquire technical knowledge and handling abilities. Certainly, computer restrains thought streams and proceedings about it, so it has been invested in time and report for learning the instruction manual or tutorials, whether it is preferred. Due to this argument it becomes known that people are attached to several systems , then the aim of this project has restricted to a limited subject referring to learning of graphic design in the Architecture Course and Industrial Draw at FAAP - Fundação Armando Alvares Penteados Plastic Arts College. The claim was not to make a profound analysis in educational area in default of time to research about it more, but the most important is the advice to all graduated professionals, mainly the Architecture course ones, to keep aware about the large computer resources possibilities as a pedagogical tool to develop models, resulting in more time for researching.

<p>This report deals with an exam report written by Olle Hjalmarsson and Thomas Likar, students at Högskolan i Halmstad. </p><p>The project was carried out for Haldex Traction AB in Landskrona whose business consist of manufacturing automatic all wheel drive systems (AWD-system). These systems consist of a plate clutch which activates all four wheels of a 4-wheel driven vehicle. An important component in these clutches is the accumulator which basically consists of a piston under the load of a spring which creates an oil pressure with the help of an electric motor used for actuating the clutch.</p><p>At Haldex difficulties has been experienced regarding the assembly of the accumulator parts due to the small tolerances between the piston and the hole of the accumulator in the cast aluminium housing. Attempts have been made to assemble the parts in existing robot cells. The precision was however not sufficient and the pistons have sometimes ripped of pieces of the housing containing the accumulator, damages which in turn have caused leakage in the accumulator valves.</p><p>Before the project was started a machine was manufactured for the assembly of the accumulator. This solution resulted in a hand operated machine which in an ergonomically point of view proved to be unsuitable. There was a need for a new machine or even a new method of assembling. </p><p>The project followed a dynamic product development process which was initiated with an analysis of existing equipment at the plant in Landskrona. Seven different concepts were presented to the company and one was chosen for further development.</p><p>The project resulted in a design of a semi automatic machine controlled by different types of pneumatic cylinders. The final design of the machine still contained some manual steps but the ones that were likely to result in injury were eliminated.</p><p>The report that was finished in December 2006 contains lists of details of chosen components and drawings of all components that need to be manufactured.</p>

As VLSI technology scales to 65nm and below, traditional communication between design and manufacturing becomes more and more inadequate. Gone are the days when designers simply pass the design GDSII file to the foundry and expect very good man¬ufacturing and parametric yield. This is largely due to the enormous challenges in the manufacturing stage as the feature size continues to shrink. Thus, the idea of DFM (Design for Manufacturing) is getting very popular. Even though there is no universally accepted definition of DFM, in my opinion, one of the major parts of DFM is to bring manufacturing information into the design stage in a way that is understood by designers. Consequently, designers can act on the information to improve both manufacturing and parametric yield. In this dissertation, I will present several attempts to reduce the gap between design and manufacturing communities: Alt-PSM aware standard cell designs, printability improve¬ment for detailed routing and the ASIC design flow with litho aware static timing analysis. Experiment results show that we can greatly improve the manufacturability of the designs and we can reduce design pessimism significantly for easier design closure.

Arcoma is a company that develops and manufactures X-ray equipment for hospitals. One of the most crucial components is the digital detector. Due to the high cost it is made removable so it could be transferred and used in other X-ray apparatus. The detector is placed in a so called detector holder. The current detector has a rectangular shape which sometimes requires a 90 degree rotation to match the shape of the patient. Recently a new quadratic detector has been introduced on the market which is larger than the current one. Because of the quadratic shape and size the new detector will not need the rotation. This means that the input function as well as the holder has to be redesigned to adapt. In this thesis the development of the detector holder is described. In the planning phase a product specification was developed. The main requirement was that the solution had to be purely mechanical. A guideline was that the new construction also had to be cheaper to manufacture than the current one. The methodology can be broadly divided into initial studies, concept generation, concept development and a final assemble in a CAD computer software. Three different main concepts where produced. They were evaluated using a Pugh matrix. One was then developed which resulted in a cheaper and much narrower construction than the original solution. This report was made for Arcoma to be used as a basis for their future development of the detector holder.

As VLSI technology scales to 65nm and below, traditional communication between design and manufacturing becomes more and more inadequate. Gone are the days when designers simply pass the design GDSII file to the foundry and expect very good man¬ufacturing and parametric yield. This is largely due to the enormous challenges in the manufacturing stage as the feature size continues to shrink. Thus, the idea of DFM (Design for Manufacturing) is getting very popular. Even though there is no universally accepted definition of DFM, in my opinion, one of the major parts of DFM is to bring manufacturing information into the design stage in a way that is understood by designers. Consequently, designers can act on the information to improve both manufacturing and parametric yield. In this dissertation, I will present several attempts to reduce the gap between design and manufacturing communities: Alt-PSM aware standard cell designs, printability improve¬ment for detailed routing and the ASIC design flow with litho aware static timing analysis. Experiment results show that we can greatly improve the manufacturability of the designs and we can reduce design pessimism significantly for easier design closure.

This research investigated whether 4D construction model effectively helps project participants on construction sites in detecting time-space conflicts in the schedule. Previous researchers on construction space management typically modeled space requirements for equipment and paths for material and focused primarily on static or dynamic layout planning. Some researchers regarded time-space conflicts as an essential aspect of construction space management. They demonstrated the use of 4D modules in time-space conflict analysis. Although these 4D prototypes have been successful in tackling time-space conflict analysis, they have been validated with only post-hoc analysis of construction projects. Also, various currently commercially available 4D visualization softwares do not take into account the workspace required during the construction of a component unless space is modeled as a separate component into the CAD application. Therefore, without modeling space as a component in the 3D model it is necessary to assess whether 4D visualization can be effectively used on construction sites to detect time-space conflicts in the schedule. In order to fulfill the research goal an experiment was conducted. A 4D construction model of an ongoing project was developed. Project participants were introduced to two different graphic representations of the schedule; namely, an overlay drawing - the conventional method used on site to detect conflicts and the 4D construction model. Analysis of the results compared the performance of the participants in detecting time-space conflicts in the schedule using the two methods. The experiment produced empirical evidence that a 4D construction model may be effective on construction sites in detecting time-space conflicts in the schedule.

Buffer insertion is an essential technique for reducing interconnect delay in submicron circuits. Though it is a well researched area, there is a need for robust and effective algorithms to perform buffer insertion at the circuit level. This thesis proposes a new buffer insertion algorithm for large circuits. The algorithm finds a buffering solution for the entire circuit such that buffer cost is minimized and the timing requirements of the circuit are satisfied. The algorithm iteratively inserts buffers in the circuit improving the circuit delay step by step. At the core of this algorithm are very simple but extremely effective techniques that constructively guide the search for a good buffering solution. A flexibility to adapt to the user's requirements and the ability to reduce the number of buffers are the strengths of this algorithm. Experimental results on ISCAS85 benchmark circuits show that the proposed algorithm, on average, yields 36% reduction in the number of buffers, and runs three times faster than one of the best known previously researched algorithms.

The CAD gene is trifunctional and expresses carbamoylphosphate synthetase/aspartate carbamyltransferase/dihydroorotase, which are required for pyrimidine biosynthesis. CAD gene activities are induced in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells, and treatment of MCF-7 or ZR-75 cells with 17b-estradiol (E2) resulted in a 3-5 fold increase in CAD mRNA levels in both cell lines. E2 induced reporter gene activity in MCF-7 and ZR-75 cells transfected with a construct containing the growth-responsive -90/+115 (pCAD1) region of the CAD gene promoter, which contains three upstream GC-rich and two downstream E-box motifs. Deletion and mutation analysis of the CAD gene promoter demonstrated that only the GC boxes that bind Sp1 protein were required for E2-responsiveness. Results of gel shift and chromatin immunoprecipitation (CHIP) assays show that both Sp1 and estrogen receptor a (ERa) interact with the GC-rich region of the CAD gene promoter. Moreover, hormone-induced transactivation of pCAD1 was inhibited by cotransfection with dominant-negative Sp1 expression plasmid and small inhibitory RNA for Sp1. These results demonstrate that, in common with many other genes involved in E2-induced cell proliferation, the CAD gene is also regulated by a nonclassical ERa/Sp1-mediated pathway. 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and other aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) ligands suppress several E2-induced responses in the rodent uterus and mammary tumors and in human breast cancer cells. TCDD inhibited hormone-induced activation of CAD mRNA levels and reporter gene activity in MCF-7 and ZR-75 cells transfected with E2-responsive pCAD promoter constructs. E2-mediated transactivation of pCAD constructs with a mutant inhibitory dioxin responsive element DRE (iDRE) were also inhibited by TCDD suggesting that inhibitory AhR-ERa/Sp1 crosstalk was iDRE-independent. It was not possible to determine whether the levels of ERa in cells cotreated with E2 plus TCDD were limiting since the proteasome inhibitor MG132 itself directly decreased CAD mRNA levels. Using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), it was shown that both E2 and TCDD enhanced AhR-ERa interactions. E2 also induced interactions between ERa and Sp1. However cotreatment with TCDD abrogated this effect. Results of this study demonstrate a unique model of AhR-ERa crosstalk where the liganded AhR inhibits ERa-Sp1 interactions and also recruits ERa to Ahresponsive gene promoters such as CYP1A1.

As Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technology moves to the nanoscale regime, design and manufacturing closure becomes very difficult to achieve due to increasing chip and power density. Imperfections due to process, voltage and temperature variations aggravate the problem. Uncertainty in electrical characteristic of individual device and wire may cause significant performance deviations or even functional failures. These impose tremendous challenges to the continuation of Moore's law as well as the growth of semiconductor industry. Efforts are needed in both deterministic design stage and variation-aware design stage. This research proposes various innovative algorithms to address both stages for obtaining a design with high frequency, low power and high robustness. For deterministic optimizations, new buffer insertion and gate sizing techniques are proposed. For variation-aware optimizations, new lithography-driven and post-silicon tuning-driven design techniques are proposed. For buffer insertion, a new slew buffering formulation is presented and is proved to be NP-hard. Despite this, a highly efficient algorithm which runs > 90x faster than the best alternatives is proposed. The algorithm is also extended to handle continuous buffer locations and blockages. For gate sizing, a new algorithm is proposed to handle discrete gate library in contrast to unrealistic continuous gate library assumed by most existing algorithms. Our approach is a continuous solution guided dynamic programming approach, which integrates the high solution quality of dynamic programming with the short runtime of rounding continuous solution. For lithography-driven optimization, the problem of cell placement considering manufacturability is studied. Three algorithms are proposed to handle cell flipping and relocation. They are based on dynamic programming and graph theoretic approaches, and can provide different tradeoff between variation reduction and wire- length increase. For post-silicon tuning-driven optimization, the problem of unified adaptivity optimization on logical and clock signal tuning is studied, which enables us to significantly save resources. The new algorithm is based on a novel linear programming formulation which is solved by an advanced robust linear programming technique. The continuous solution is then discretized using binary search accelerated dynamic programming, batch based optimization, and Latin Hypercube sampling based fast simulation.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2001. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 82 p.; also contains graphics. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-81).