Both response to intervention (RTI) and recognition and response systems recommend the use of evidence-based teaching strategies and individualized data collection to monitor the students' response to such strategies. In addition to the efficacy of interventions, individual stakeholders should have a voice in which intervention is implemented. Constant prompt delay and progressive prompt delay procedures have been routinely implemented and have been proven to be effective at teaching important skills to a variety populations; however, no objective data has been reported on the stakeholders' preference for such procedures. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate the relative efficacy of as well as the relative preference for prompt delay procedures. Four preschool children experienced three teaching conditions: constant prompt delay, progressive prompt delay, and a control condition. A multi-element design was used to evaluate the relative efficacy of the prompt delay procedures at teaching pre-academic tasks while a modified concurrent chains arrangement was used to evaluate each child's relative preference for each teaching strategy. The results for efficacy of and preference for prompt delay procedures were idiosyncratic for all participants. These results as well implication of the results are discussed.

This dissertation encompasses primarily design for testability (DFT) problems of concurrent checking and structural off-line Built-In Self-Test. We present a new DFT method, which employs cyclic code checking as a medium to combine the concurrent checking and signature analysis in a built-in fashion. It uses bit-sliced linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) or linear cellular automata registers (LCARs) as the implementation mechanism. A circuit under test designed in this method supports both on-line and off-line testability with shared hardware resources. It has comparable on-line error-detecting ability to the conventional error-detecting codes and without affecting the high fault coverage of off-line signature analysis. This testing scheme complies with the IEEE boundary-scan standard and is applicable to general circuitry. Evaluations of the proposed scheme are carried out with respect to the area overhead, performance and testing time, design complexity, pin count, and fault coverage. The concatenation properties of LCARs are introduced and recent developments in related issues are reviewed. Finally, a new area estimation method for circuit design is presented to ease silicon cost measurement / Graduate

Pour utiliser la puissance de calcul des ordinateurs modernes, nous devons écrire des programmes concurrents. L’écriture de programme concurrent efficace est notoirement difficile, principalement en raison de la nécessité de gérer les coûts de synchronisation. Dans cette thèse, nous nous concentrons sur les coûts de synchronisation dans les programmes parallèles et les structures de données concurrentes.D’abord, nous présentons une nouvelle technique de contrôle de la granularité pour les programmes parallèles conçus pour un environnement de multi-threading dynamique. Ensuite, dans le contexte des structures de données concurrentes, nous considérons la notion d’optimalité de concurrence (concurrency-optimality) et proposons la première implémentation concurrence-optimal d’un arbre binaire de recherche qui, intuitivement, accepte un ordonnancement concurrent si et seulement si l’ordonnancement est correct. Nous proposons aussi la combinaison parallèle (parallel combining), une technique qui permet l’implémentation efficace des structures de données concurrences à partir de leur version parallèle par lots. Nous validons les techniques proposées par une évaluation expérimentale, qui montre des performances supérieures ou comparables à celles des algorithmes de l’état de l’art.Dans une perspective plus formelle, nous considérons le phénomène d’assistance (helping) dans des structures de données concurrentes. On observe un phénomène d’assistance quand l’ordre d’une opération d’un processus dans une trace linéarisée est fixée par une étape d’un autre processus. Nous montrons qu’aucune implémentation sans attente (wait-free) linéarisable d’une pile utilisant les primitives read, write, compare&swap et fetch&add ne peut être “sans assistance” (help-free), corrigeant une erreur dans une preuve antérieure de Censor-Hillel et al. Finalement, nous proposons une façon simple de prédire analytiquement le débit (throughput) des structures de données basées sur des verrous à gros grains. / To use the computational power of modern computing machines, we have to deal with concurrent programs. Writing efficient concurrent programs is notoriously difficult, primarily due to the need of harnessing synchronization costs. In this thesis, we focus on synchronization costs in parallel programs and concurrent data structures.First, we present a novel granularity control technique for parallel programs designed for the dynamic multithreading environment. Then in the context of concurrent data structures, we consider the notion of concurrency-optimality and propose the first implementation of a concurrency-optimal binary search tree that, intuitively, accepts a concurrent schedule if and only if the schedule is correct. Also, we propose parallel combining, a technique that enables efficient implementations of concurrent data structures from their parallel batched counterparts. We validate the proposed techniques via experimental evaluations showing superior or comparable performance with respect to state-of-the-art algorithms.From a more formal perspective, we consider the phenomenon of helping in concurrent data structures. Intuitively, helping is observed when the order of some operation in a linearization is fixed by a step of another process. We show that no wait-free linearizable implementation of stack using read, write, compare&swap and fetch&add primitives can be help-free, correcting a mistake in an earlier proof by Censor-Hillel et al. Finally, we propose a simple way to analytically predict the throughput of data structures based on coarse-grained locking

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Concurrency is a programming tool that is widely used in applications. Concurrent user-level threads can be used to structure the execution of a program in a uniprocessor environment and/or speed up its execution in a multiprocessor setting. Unfortunately, threads may interact with each other in unpredictable ways, often leading to performance problems that are nonexistent in the sequential domain. <br /><br /> A profiler can be used to help locate performance problems in sequential and concurrent programs. A profiler is a tool that monitors, analyzes, and visualizes the execution performance of a program to help users verify its expected behaviour, and locate its bottlenecks and hotspots. One of the important tools a profiler has at its disposal is a set of hardware counters, which are specialized CPU registers that count the occurrences of hardware events as a program executes. Hardware-event counts provide extremely precise insight into the execution behaviour of a program, and can be used to pinpoint portions of code where performance is suboptimal. <br /><br /> This thesis describes the design and implementation of <em>&micro;</em>Profiler, which is a profiler for sequential and concurrent programs written in a concurrent dialect of the C++ programming language called <em>??</em>C++. <em>??</em>C++ offers user-level concurrency in a uniprocessor or multiprocessor shared-memory environment. A new architecture-abstraction layer is developed, which allows <em>??</em>Profiler to access hardware counters on multiple CPU types. As well, two new profiling metrics are presented, which use the architecture-abstraction layer to gather hardware-event counts for <em>??</em>C++ programs. These metrics offer performance information about <em>??</em>C++ programs that is unavailable by any other means.

In the experimental analysis of behavior, response allocation is typically studied under concurrent interval schedules, with two response alternatives, in a static environment. The natural environment of the unfettered organism, however, is dynamic insofar as even frequently visited environments are rarely identical from encounter to encounter. Additionally, natural environments usually offer more than two concurrently available behaviors that are often scheduled for reinforcement contingent on rate of responding. The purpose of this study was to determine how the addition or removal of a third response alternative affected response allocation between two topographically dissimilar operants on independent concurrent ratio schedules in a dynamic environment. Results indicate that the addition of the third operant served to temporarily suppress response rates of the first two operants but had no or only minor and inconsistent effects on relative allocation. The reintroduction of the third operant in a new location again suppressed response rates in three of four subjects and slightly shifted response allocation for one subject. Highly individual anecdotal patterns could be seen in tangential observations of each of 4 subjects. The results suggest the possibility that new alternatives have temporary effects on response bias, and that these effects may be variable and dependent on details of individual history and stimulus control.

M.A. Faculty of Humanties, School of Social Sciences. University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / INTRODUCTION: Zimbabwe has witnessed a decline in HIV prevalence in the general population estimated to be 27% in 2001, 19% in 2005, 16% in 2007 and 14% in 2009 (Mapingure et al., 2010). Whilst it is a notable decline the rate is still high. Sexual behaviour change has been reported as key to this HIV prevalence decline. Partner reduction has been advocated as an important strategy in HIV prevention. Understanding the socioeconomic and demographic factors influencing the sexual behaviours that are either sustaining the declining, yet still high, prevalence rates is critical to inform interventions. There is growing interest in the association between individual’s socioeconomic status and sexual risk taking behaviour in sub-Saharan Africa. The general objective was to examine the association between wealth and sexual behaviour among men in Zimbabwe. METHOD: Analysis of data from 7175 sexually active aged 15-54 years who participated in the Zimbabwe’s 2005/06 Demographic and Health Survey was done using logistic regression models and have reported odds ratios (OR) with Confidence intervals. In the multiple logistic regressions, two models were used. Model 1 included variables: wealth, age and education whilst in model 2 we controlled for: marital status, type of residence, region of residence and religion because these socio-demographic factors influence male sexual behaviour. The dependent variables included: unprotected sex at last encounter, multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships in last 12 months. RESULTS: When we controlled for potential confounding effects of education, age, marital status, type of residence, region of residence and religion, men in the middle wealth category of the population were less likely to have engaged in unprotected sex in the last encounter with a nonspousal cohabiting partner (OR 0.41, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.76). Wealth was found to be not statistically significantly associated with multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships. CONCLUSION: Wealthy men in Zimbabwe are less likely to engage in unprotected sex. Wealth’s association with multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships was not confirmed in this study. Equitable distribution of wealth and sound economic policies are critical in improving the general welfare of nationals so as to reduce or eliminate some of the factors that cloud the associations between socioeconomic and demographic factors and sexual behaviours of individuals. Policies and programs that recommend deferral of gratification remain critical in order to reduce number of partners.

The current study investigated variability in student performance on a concurrent verbalization measure based on a grade-level sample math word problem and sought to determine to what extent the variability in verbalization scores is related to scores on a reliable measure of reading (DIBELS Next) and math (easyCBM) and to student factors (e.g. sex, grade, economic status). In light of the 2014 implementation of the Common Core State Standards and related measures of student performance, both of which contain components of language in mathematics curriculum and assessment, it was the intent of this study to identify factors associated with verbalization on sample math word problems that could be correlated with student performance on reliable, commonly used assessments of reading and math. The sample for analysis included 105 intermediate-grade students from one elementary school in the Pacific Northwest. Results support a relation between students' verbalizations about math word problems and benchmark assessments in reading and math. Limitations of the study, considerations for future research, and implications for practice are discussed.

K.Y. Mok. / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986. / Bibliography: leaf 96.