Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Έγινε κατασκευή ενός προγράμματος το οποίο εξετάζει μια κατασκευή και υπολογίζει αναλυτικά τον κίνδυνο που αυτή διατρέχει λόγω κεραυνών. / The subject of this project is protection against lightning, meaning the measures needed to be taken for a building so that a possible lightning strike will not cause human or material damage. The first part consists of an essential theoretical approach on the lightning phenomenon. Both the causes, the consequences and the conditions in which the lightning occurs are being analyzed. Furthermore, the characteristics and the qualifications a Lightning Protection System needs to comply with, are given, according to the Greek standard ΔΛΟΣ 1197 and the European standard IEC 62305-2. The factors one examines to determine the risk, the technical details of the LPS, and the -step by step- calculation of the risk are being mentioned. After this analysis, the criteria whether the building is adequately protected, or not, are given, and in case the answer is negative, the procedure to design a safe LPS is given. Along with writing this essay, a computer program was produced. The program calculates the risk a building faces due to lightning. In the second part of the essay one can read the way this program works and the description of its construction. First, an algorithm approach of the procedure of risk calculation is given in detail. The program runs in Microsoft Excel and includes functions, menus, graphics and other special features. Given that the procedure was so complicated at some point, we had to use Visual Basic nested programming to produce a functional program. In the final part, significant parts of the code and some programming methods are described. The results this program gives, allow an engineer to have a good overview on the protection the lightning building provides, and to choose an effective, cost efficient LPS, if needed.

The findings of this investigation support the following conclusions. 1. The review of published research reports yielded conflicting conclusions as to the value of using minicalculators in teaching mathematics to students. 2. The use of minicalculators does not improve a student's mathematical achievement as measured by the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills. 3. The use of minicalculators does not improve a student's attitude as measured by the Likert-Tye Attitude Scale. 4. The use of minicalculators does not improve a student's self-esteem as measured by the Self-Esteem Inventory. 5. There is no significant difference in attitude, selfesteem or mathematical achievement between boys and girls in the area of mathematics.

Ett av grundskolans uppdrag är att elever ska utveckla kunskap om de fyra räknesättens olika egenskaper. En sådan egenskap är kommutativitet för räknesättet addition, vilket innebär att termers rumsliga placering inte har betydelse för summan. Inom kunskapsområdet aritmetik och algebra är kunskap om den kommutativa egenskapen av vikt. I denna studie intervjuades tio elever i årskurs 2. Intervjuerna var semistrukturerade, vilket bland annat innebar att en intervjuguide följdes. Syftet var att kvalitativt beskriva hur elever resonerar kring operationer med tydlig kommutativitet genom att också använda operationer utan kommutativa egenskaper. Analysen visar att eleverna kan fokusera på olika aspekter av kommutativitet, de kan fokusera på summan, på termerna eller på operationen. Studien visar också att det förekommer elever som övergeneraliserar den kommutativa egenskapen till att gälla vid uttryck med subtraktion. / According to the curriculum, students in elementary school should develop their understanding of the different properties of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. One property is commutativity for addition. Which means that the terms’ spatial position does not change the sum. A solid understanding of the commutative property is of importance in arithmetic but also in algebra. This qualitative study is based on interviews with ten students in second grade. The purpose of the study is to investigate how students reason when they meet sequences with commutative and non-commutative expressions. The result is that students tend to describe commutativity by focusing on either the sum, the terms or the operation. Students in the study also overgeneralize the commutative property to expression with subtraction.

This thesis is the theoretical part discusses various approaches to calculating warehouse and sales price as reported in the literature and other sources. In the practical part analyzes the calculation of inventory and sales prices Pierburg, Ltd. Based on the analysis highlights the positive and negative aspects of the price system used, or will be proposed recommendations for future adjustments.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / The surprise failure of two NASA Space Shuttles and the premature failures of satellite subsystem equipment on NASA satellites are motivating NASA to adopt an engineering discipline that uses telemetry specifically developed for preventing surprise equipment failures. The NASA Orion spacecraft is an Apollo module-like capsule planned to replace the NASA Space Shuttle reusable launch vehicle for getting astronauts to space and return to the earth safely as well as a crew escape vehicle stored at the ISS. To do so, NASA is adopting a non-Markov reliability paradigm for measuring equipment life based on the prognostic and health management program on the Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The decision is based on the results from the prognostic analysis completed on the Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia that identified the information that was present but was ignored for a variety of reasons. The goal of a PHM is to produce equipment that will not fail prematurely. It includes using predictive algorithms to measure equipment usable life. Equipment with transient behavior caused from accelerated of parts will fail prematurely with 100% certainty. For many decades, it was believed that test equipment and software used to in testing and noise from communications equipment were the cause of most transient behavior. With the processing speed of today's processors, transient behavior is caused from at least one part suffering from accelerated aging. Transient behavior is illustrated in equipment telemetry in a prognostic analysis. Telemetry is equipment performance information and equipment performance has been used to increase reliability, but performance is unrelated to equipment remaining usable life and so equipment should be failing prematurely. A PHM requires equipment telemetry for analysis and so analog telemetry will be available from all Orion avionics equipment. Replacing equipment with a measured remaining usable life of less than one year will stop the premature and surprise equipment failures from occurring during future manned and unmanned space missions.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / Launch vehicle equipment reliability is driven by infant mortality failures, which can be eliminated using a prognostic analysis prior, during and/or after the exhaustive and comprehensive dynamic environmental factory acceptance testing. Measuring and confirming equipment performance is completed to increase equipment reliability by identifying equipment that fails during test for repair/replacement. To move to the 100% reliability domain, equipment dynamic environmental factory testing should be followed by a prognostic analysis to measure equipment usable life and identify the equipment that will fail prematurely. During equipment testing, only equipment performance is measured and equipment performance is unrelated to equipment reliability making testing alone inadequate to produce equipment with 100% reliability. A prognostic analysis converts performance measurements into an invasive usable life measurement by sharing test data used to measure equipment performance. Performance data is converted to usable life data provides a time-to-failure (TTF) in minutes/hours/days/months for equipment that will fail within the first year of use, allowing the production of equipment with 100% reliability.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / Satellite and launch vehicles continues to suffer from catastrophic infant mortality failures. NASA now requires satellite suppliers to provide on-orbit satellite delivery and a free satellite and launch vehicle in the event of a catastrophic infant mortality failure. A high infant mortality failure rate demonstrates that the factory acceptance test program alone is inadequate for producing 100% reliability space vehicle equipment. This inadequacy is caused from personnel only measuring equipment performance during ATP and performance is unrelated to reliability. Prognostic technology uses pro-active diagnostics, active reasoning and proprietary algorithms that illustrate deterministic data for prognosticians to identify piece-parts, components and assemblies that will fail within the first year of use allowing this equipment to be repaired or replaced while still on the ground. Prognostic technology prevents equipment failures and so is pro-active. Adding prognostic technology will identify all unreliable equipment prior to shipment to the launch pad producing 100% reliable equipment and will eliminate launch failures, launch pad delays, on-orbit infant mortalities, surprise in-orbit failures. Moving to the 100% reliable equipment extends on-orbit equipment usable life.

Magíster en Ingeniería de Negocios con Tecnologías de Información / Un medio de apoyo a la toma de decisiones mejora la programación de pabellón quirúrgico y reduce las suspensiones quirúrgicas, que fueron el 14% de las operaciones en el 2015. El cálculo de la duración de las operaciones y el cálculo de la cantidad de operaciones condicionales (sobreventa), de manera idónea, brinda parte de la solución, sin embargo los principales beneficios son pequeños, debido a la escasa información, complejidad de las decisiones, recolección y procesamiento de datos. Los sistemas de producción con gran demanda para servicios especializados generan retos que el personal del hospital resuelve en parte. Esto motiva a utilizar la Metodología de la Ingeniería de Negocios que planifica, diseña e implementa una solución para superar estas complejidades, acorde con los objetivos de la institución. En específico, se diseñó e implemento un aplicativo el cual fue probado en un piloto durante dos meses. Con los datos generados se utilizaron técnicas de inteligencia de negocio para determinar el método más adecuado para el cálculo de duraciones de los servicios y se generó un modelo para gestionar la sobreventa. Como resultado se brinda tres aportes, primero se distingue los factores que originan disfuncionalidades, las acciones de los gestores para afrontar esas disfuncionalidades y la forma de generar oportunidades de mejorar los resultados de las decisiones de los gestores. Segundo, se demuestra la capacidad de mejorar en la precisión del cálculo de la duración de una operación, de 26% a 52%, utilizando la mediana agrupada por tipo de operación. Tercero, se presenta un modelo de sobreventa que considera la factibilidad operativa y prioridad médica.

This work focuses on a cognitive science inspired solution to an event detection problem in a video domain. The thesis raises the question whether video sequences that are taken in highway tunnels can be used to create meaningful data in terms of symbolic representation, and whether these symbolic representations can be used as sequences to be parsed by attribute grammars into abnormal and normal events. The main motivation of the research was to develop a novel algorithm that parses sequences of primitive events created by the image processing algorithms. The domain of the research is video detection and the special application purpose is for highway tunnels, which are critical places for abnormality detection. The method used is attribute grammars to parse the sequences. The symbolic sequences are created from a cascade of image processing algorithms such as / background subtracting, shadow reduction and object tracking. The system parses the sequences and creates alarms if a car stops, moves backwards, changes lanes, or if a person walks into the road or is in the vicinity when a car is moving along the road. These critical situations are detected using Earley&rsquo / s parser, and the system achieves real-time performance while processing the video input. This approach substantially lowers the number of false alarms created by the lower level image processing algorithms by preserving the number of detected events at a maximum. The system also achieves a high compression rate from primitive events while keeping the lost information at minimum. The output of the algorithm is measured against SVM and observed to be performing better in terms of detection and false alarm performance.