The implementation of multiple processors on a single chip has been made possible with advancements in process technology. The benefits of having multiple cores on a single chip bring with it a new set of constraints for maintaining fast and consistent memory accesses. Cache coherence protocols are needed to maintain the consistency of shared memory on individual caches. Current cache coherency protocols are either snoop based, which is not scalable but provides fast access for small number of cores, or directory based, which involves a directory that acts as the ordering point providing scalability with relatively slower access. Our focus is on improving the memory access time of the scalable directory protocol. We have observed that most memory requests follow a pattern where in one of the processors, which we will dub the Producer, repeatedly writes to a particular memory location. A subset of the remaining cores, which we will dub the Consumers, repeatedly read the data from that same memory location. In our implementation we utilize this relationship to provide direct cache to cache transfers and minimize the access time by avoiding the indirection through the directory. We move the directory temporarily to the Producer node so that the consumer can directly request the producer for the cache line. Our technique improves the memory access time by 13 percent and reduces network traffic by 30 percent over standard directory coherence protocol with very little area overhead.

Seeds are complex entities, within which the intricate processes of germination and early growth occur. We describe here a novel technique of our group in 2012 which is capable of simultaneous solution-, gel-, and solid-state analysis. CMP-NMR was applied to intact seeds where all components are studied and differentiated in situ. Characterization, germination and early growth of seeds were studied by variety of 1D and 2D 1H and 13C CMP-NMR experiments. Various metabolites, lipids, carbohydrate biopolymers and structural carbohydrates were first identified and further studied in germination and early growth stages. This research demonstrates the utility of CMP- NMR as a powerful tool to better understand the composition of seeds and processes underlying early seed growth.

Seeds are complex entities, within which the intricate processes of germination and early growth occur. We describe here a novel technique of our group in 2012 which is capable of simultaneous solution-, gel-, and solid-state analysis. CMP-NMR was applied to intact seeds where all components are studied and differentiated in situ. Characterization, germination and early growth of seeds were studied by variety of 1D and 2D 1H and 13C CMP-NMR experiments. Various metabolites, lipids, carbohydrate biopolymers and structural carbohydrates were first identified and further studied in germination and early growth stages. This research demonstrates the utility of CMP- NMR as a powerful tool to better understand the composition of seeds and processes underlying early seed growth.

Theory Stroke, a cerebrovascular disease, causes severe disability and failure of self-sufficiency for nearly of half of the patients. Nursing focuses on respecting the individuality of each patient, supports the return and consolidation of a good health, promotes self-sufficiency and searches for the needs of the patient. Conceptual model of D. E. Orem assumes the ability of each human to take care of self. Although partially, or not capable of self-care at all, it is necessary to fill up the deficit by nursing care. Objectives The first objective was to state the options to how to fill up the deficit of self-care by patienst after stroke. The second objective was to determine, whether the patient´s living environment has an impact the development of self-care. Research questions Q1: Does the home environment stimulate the acceleration of the return of self-care ability by patients after a stroke? Q2 : Does the respondent perceive the issue of own disability equaly as the surrounding? Q3 : Is it more beneficial for the patient to perform self-care with deficiency, or to receive perfect execution of it by others? Q4 : Does the patient perceive the subsequent therapy (physiotherapy, occupational therapy) as a faster way to return to sufficient self-care? The research part of the thesis was carried out by a qualitative survey, conducted as a individual semi-structured thematic interviews with respondents devided into two groups. One group consisted of patients after a stroke and a second group of caregivers. Total of 8 patients, 4 males and 4 females, were interviewed. The research was completed in three sessions, each at intervals of four to six weeks. The information received were processed by open coding method, analytical induction development of technology showdown and narrative analysis. Results Using data received from interviews with respondents it was possible to answer all the research questions. The first research question examined was, whether the home environment stimulates the acceleration of the return of self-care ability by patients after a stroke. According to interviews and objective evaluation, the domestic environment has improved overall condition and faster return to individual self-care. Although, aftercare provided enough nursing and rehabilitative care, patient very much appreciated mental stimulation given by the home environment. The second research question focused on whether the respondent perceives own disability equaly as the surrounding. The interviews showed most of the patients perceive their health and subsequent disabilities better than its surroundings. The third research question examined whether it is more beneficial for the patient to perform self-care with deficiency, or to receive perfect execution of it by others. The results indicated more benefits by performing own self-care, even with mistakes that encourage practising, thereby repeating and consolidating manners. Most of the respondents refused any help. The fourth research question focused on patient´s perception of the subsequent therapy (physiotherapy, occupational therapy) as a faster way to return to sufficient self-care. The interviews showed that the respondents did not realize the importance of aftercare, considered it to be routine and as a part of the treatment. Yet, increased physiotherapy activities results into a quicker adjustment of self-sufficiency. Conclusion The temporal evolution of self-sufficiency of patients after a stroke and the attitudes of caregivers are described in this thesis. The results are presented in a form of mental map. This might be used by the patients after stroke, nursing staff or official home caregivers and informal caregivers, as well.

Strokes are one of the most serious diseases that often lead to permanent disability and in some cases even to death. Currently, widely available treatment by intravenous thrombolysis is recommended. The objectives of this diploma thesis are to analyse complications that may arise for patients with iCMP treated by intravenous system thrombolysis, to define the role of a nurse in ICU in terms of taking care of this group of patients, and to map all the factors influencing the result of the treatment. In order to obtain the data necessary, combined research method has been applied. The quantitative part was retrospectively evaluated based on SITS Registry data. The research part comprised of patients, to whom IVT was applied between January 2014 and December 2015. The subjects of the analysis were treatment complications, gender of patients treated by IVT, risk factors present, time data, and heaviness of the deficit before the treatment and after. Furthermore, we observed where is the patient released to after IVT and how many patients are able to stay in home environments three months after the treatment. Qualitative part of the investigation was evaluated based on half-structured interviews with the nurses working in ICUs for highly specialized care for patients with stroke. We observed their...

abstract: In this dissertation, remote plasma interactions with the surfaces of low-k interlayer dielectric (ILD), Cu and Cu adhesion layers are investigated. The first part of the study focuses on the simultaneous plasma treatment of ILD and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) Cu surfaces using N2/H2 plasma processes. H atoms and radicals in the plasma react with the carbon groups leading to carbon removal for the ILD films. Results indicate that an N2 plasma forms an amide-like layer on the surface which apparently leads to reduced carbon abstraction from an H2 plasma process. In addition, FTIR spectra indicate the formation of hydroxyl (Si-OH) groups following the plasma exposure. Increased temperature (380 °C) processing leads to a reduction of the hydroxyl group formation compared to ambient temperature processes, resulting in reduced changes of the dielectric constant. For CMP Cu surfaces, the carbonate contamination was removed by an H2 plasma process at elevated temperature while the C-C and C-H contamination was removed by an N2 plasma process at elevated temperature. The second part of this study examined oxide stability and cleaning of Ru surfaces as well as consequent Cu film thermal stability with the Ru layers. The ~2 monolayer native Ru oxide was reduced after H-plasma processing. The thermal stability or islanding of the Cu film on the Ru substrate was characterized by in-situ XPS. After plasma cleaning of the Ru adhesion layer, the deposited Cu exhibited full coverage. In contrast, for Cu deposition on the Ru native oxide substrate, Cu islanding was detected and was described in terms of grain boundary grooving and surface and interface energies. The thermal stability of 7 nm Ti, Pt and Ru ii interfacial adhesion layers between a Cu film (10 nm) and a Ta barrier layer (4 nm) have been investigated in the third part. The barrier properties and interfacial stability have been evaluated by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS). Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to measure the surfaces before and after annealing, and all the surfaces are relatively smooth excluding islanding or de-wetting phenomena as a cause of the instability. The RBS showed no discernible diffusion across the adhesion layer/Ta and Ta/Si interfaces which provides a stable underlying layer. For a Ti interfacial layer RBS indicates that during 400 °C annealing Ti interdiffuses through the Cu film and accumulates at the surface. For the Pt/Cu system Pt interdiffuion is detected which is less evident than Ti. Among the three adhesion layer candidates, Ru shows negligible diffusion into the Cu film indicating thermal stability at 400 °C. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Physics 2012

Orientadores: Martin Tygel, Lucio Tunes dos Santos / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecanica e Instituto de Geociencias / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-12T15:47:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Nunes_RodrigoSilva_M.pdf: 3222542 bytes, checksum: a51b6fa6537055a2ce60aa8066fc2be2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: O método CRS (do Inglês "Common Reflection Surface"), introduzido por Peter Hubral em 1997, é uma técnica alternativa ao convencional empilhamento CMP. O empilhamento CRS é capaz de fornecer não apenas uma melhoria nas seções simuladas de afastamento nulo (ZO), mas também um trio de parâmetros que extraem mais informações sobre a propagação do meio do que o único parâmetro do clássico método CMP, a velocidade NMO. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o potencial do método CRS em produzir modelos de velocidades sísmicas, analogamente para a computação da velocidade NMO no método CMP. Nós descrevemos os métodos CMP e CRS e comparamos suas performances sobre ilustrações sintéticas e exemplos de dados reais. / Abstract: The Common Reflection Surface (CRS) method, introduced by Peter Hubral in 1997, is an alternative technique to the conventional CMP stacking. The CRS stack is able to provide not only improved simulated zero-offset sections, but also a set of parameters that convey more information of the propagating medium than the single NMO-velocity parameter of the classical CMP method. The objective of this work is to analyze the potential of the CRS method to produce seismic velocity models, analogously to the computation of the NMO velocities in the CMP method. We review the CMP and CRS methods, and compare their performances on illustrative synthetic and real data examples. / Mestrado / Reservatórios e Gestão / Mestre em Ciências e Engenharia de Petróleo

In this study, slurry availability and the extent of the slurry mixing (i.e., among fresh slurry, spent slurry, and residual rinse-water) were varied via three different injection schemes. An ultraviolet enhanced fluorescence technique was employed to qualitatively indicate slurry availability and its flow on the pad during polishing. This study investigated standard pad center area slurry application and a slurry injection system (SIS) that covered only the outer half of the wafer track. Results indicated that the radial position of slurry injection and the alteration of fluid mechanics by the SIS played important roles in slurry mixing characteristics and availability atop the pad. Removal rates were found to decrease with slurry availability, while a higher degree of slurry mixing decreased the fraction of fresh slurry and consequently lowered the removal rate. By using a hybrid system (i.e., a combination of slurry injection via SIS and standard pad center slurry application), the polishing process benefited from higher slurry availability and higher fraction of fresh slurry than the conventional pad center slurry application and the shorter SIS, individually. This work underscores the importance of optimum slurry injection geometry and flow for obtaining a more cost-effective and environmentally benign chemical mechanical planarization process.

Many-core architectures provide an efficient way of harnessing the growing numbers of transistors available in modern fabrication processes; however, the parallel programs run on these platforms are increasingly limited by the energy and latency costs of communication. Existing designs provide a functional communication layer but do not necessarily implement the most efficient solution for chip-multiprocessors, placing limits on the performance of these complex systems. In an era of increasingly power limited silicon design, efficiency is now a primary concern that motivates designers to look again at the challenge of cache coherence. The first step in the design process is to analyse the communication behaviour of parallel benchmark suites such as Parsec and SPLASH-2. This thesis presents work detailing the sharing patterns observed when running the full benchmarks on a simulated 32-core x86 machine. The results reveal considerable locality of shared data accesses between threads with consecutive operating system assigned thread IDs. This pattern, although of little consequence in a multi-node system, corresponds to strong physical locality of shared data between adjacent cores on a chip-multiprocessor platform. Traditional cache coherence protocols, although often used in chip-multiprocessor designs, have been developed in the context of older multi-node systems. By redesign- ing coherence protocols to exploit new patterns such as the physical locality of shared data, improving the efficiency of communication, specifically in chip-multiprocessors, is possible. This thesis explores such a design - Proximity Coherence - a novel scheme in which L1 load misses are optimistically forwarded to nearby caches via new dedicated links rather than always being indirected via a directory structure.

Title: The usage of virtual reality in therapy of patients with neglect syndrome with consideration of a cybersickness risk. Objective: To find out if stroke patients with neglect syndrome tend to have higher risk of gaining cybersickness after using virtual reality compared to stroke patients without neglect syndrome and healthy population. Also, to find out if the severity of neglect syndrome has correlation with the severity of gained cybersickness. Afterwards to evaluate the trend of making games in virtual reality for treating neglect syndrome with consideration of a cybersickness risk. Methods: The experiment participants played game in virtual reality developed for treating neglect syndrome for ten minutes. During the game participants were seated and were playing using head movements. A HTC VIVE console was used to deliver the virtual reality game. Participants were divided into 3 groups: the group Zdraví (n = 12) without neurological impairment, the group CMP (n = 6) for stroke patients without neglect syndrome and the group Neglect (n = 10) for stroke patients with neglect syndrome (KF-NAP ≥ 1). Each proband had to fill Sickness Simulator Questionnaire which was used to detect cybersickness before and after playing the game in virtual reality. Collecting and sorting of the data was done...