This exploratory research is based on an objectivist epistemology with a positivist theoretical perspective that deployed concurrent mixed methods (MMR) design through a quantitative administered survey alongside an in-depth qualitative analysis through interviews exploring the perspectives of leaders on EHS leadership and governance. The research literature review focused on EHS leadership, corporate governance and strongly related topics. This MMR research employed both an expert panel-validated survey and a semi-structured interview protocol which explored 9 themes which emerged from the literature review including EHS/Safety Leadership; Risk Management; Influence and Accountability. Due to pragmatics relating to the number of leaders accessed (N=30) the statistical analysis is limited to descriptive type statistics. Almost all respondents supported the monitoring role of the Board of Directors (BoD), but disagreed that the BoD should play an active role in risk management. Comparisons are drawn between the Oil and Gas and non-Oil and Gas organizations with interesting results especially in matters relating to risk management. Structured thematic content analysis yields that Safety Culture; Leadership; Influence and Accountability were the three leading themes accounting for just over 50% of the responses analysed. Many sub-themes have also emerged and are discussed. A Model of EHS Leadership and Governance was created and is presented which positions themes and factors that influence monitoring of EHS performance and ultimately risk management. The research can be considered as a unique contribution as a relatively small body of currently published work in this subject area, both globally and more so in the GCC.

Power gating is a technique commonly used for runtime leakage reduction in digital CMOS circuits. In microprocessors, power gating can be implemented by using sleep transistors to selectively deactivate circuit modules when they are idle during program execution. In this dissertation, a framework for power gating arithmetic functional units in embedded microprocessors with architecture and compiler support is proposed. During compile time, program regions are identified where one or more functional units are idle and sleep instructions are inserted into the code so that those units can be put to sleep during program execution. Subsequently, when their need is detected during the instruction decode stage, they are woken up with the help of hardware control signals. For a set of benchmarks from the MiBench suite, leakage energy savings of 27% and 31% are achieved (based on a 70 nm PTM model) in the functional units of a processor, modeled on the ARM architecture, with and without floating point units, respectively. Further, the impact of traditional performance-enhancing compiler optimizations on the amount of leakage savings obtained with this framework is studied through analysis and simulations. Based on the observations, a leakage-aware compilation flow is derived that improves the effectiveness of this framework. It is observed that, through the use of various compiler optimizations, an additional savings of around 15% and even up to 9X leakage energy savings in individual functional units is possible. Finally,in the context of multi-core processors supporting multithreading, three different microarchitectural techniques, for different multithreading schemes, are investigated for state-retentive power gating of register files. In an in-order core, when a thread gets blocked due to a memory stall, the corresponding register file can be placed in a low leakage state. When the memory stall gets resolved, the register file is activated so that it may be accessed again. The overhead due to wake-up latency is completely hidden in two of the schemes, while it is hidden for the most part in the third. Experimental results on multiprogrammed workloads comprised of SPEC 2000 integer benchmarks show that, in an 8-core processor executing 64 threads, the average leakage savings in the register files, modeled in FreePDK 45 nm MTCMOS technology, are 42% in coarse-grained multithreading, while they are between 7% and 8% in fine-grained and simultaneous multithreading. The contributions of this dissertation represent a significant advancement in the quest for reducing leakage energy consumption in microprocessors with minimal degradation in performance.

Les systèmes critiques, parmi lesquels les systèmes embarqués construits autour d'un microprocesseur mono-cœur exécutant un logiciel d'application, ne sont pas à l'abri d'interférences naturelles ou malveillantes qui peuvent provoquer des fautes transitoires. Cette thèse porte sur des protections qui peuvent être implantées pour détecter les effets de telles fautes transitoires sans faire d'hypothèses sur la multiplicité des erreurs générées. De plus, ces erreurs peuvent être soit des erreurs de flot de contrôle soit des erreurs sur les données. Une nouvelle méthode de vérification de flot de contrôle est tout d'abord proposée. Elle permet de vérifier, sans modifier le système initial, que les instructions du programme d'application sont lues sans erreur et dans le bon ordre. Les erreurs sur les données sont également prises en compte par une extension de la vérification de flot de contrôle. La méthode proposée offre un bon compromis entre les différents surcoûts, le temps de latence de détection et la couverture des erreurs. Les surcoûts peuvent aussi être ajustés aux besoins de l'application. La méthode est mise en œuvre sur un prototype, construit autour d'un microprocesseur Sparc v8. Les fonctions d'analyse de criticité développées dans le cadre de la méthodologie proposée sont également utilisées pour évaluer l'impact des options de compilation sur la robustesse intrinsèque du logiciel d'application.

The Health Sector at the state of Kuwait is facing many challenges. One of which is public expectations in health are high, and thus, the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Kuwait has amplified the health expenditure by 86% since 2007. And since the medicine budget represents half of the total MOH budget, it is proposed that the development in health policy might be a suitable tool to control the inflation within the health budget. This thesis examines the opportunities and challenges of introducing an EML in Kuwait and the factors influencing its effectiveness. A mixed-methodology approach has been used to enhance and validate the data, in the form of interviews, comparative studies and questionnaires. One major limitation to the research was the lack of previous data relating to this work, and the information should be gathered in person in the form of hard copies, and later, the data was analysed using qualitative and quantitative approaches. It has been attained that, the EML might be a valuable tool if adopted and implemented appropriately, EML adjustment to country health situation is crucial for successful utilisation and fulfilling the concept objectives. Standard Treatment Guidelines are fundamental part of EM selection process, in Kuwait there were lack in the uniformity of the local STG, but fortunately, there is an eagerness to innovate, and the medicine situation might benefit from a type of organisation, overall, if the EML implemented efficiently in Kuwait, it might help in improving the general health and control the inflation in MOH budget.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre de l’ingénierie dirigée par les modèles (IDM) pour le développement des systèmes embarquées. Ces systèmes ayant généralement des ressources limitées (mémoire et/ou calculs), exigent que le code généré soit le plus optimisé possible. L’objectif de cette thèse est de produire à partir d’un modèle spécifié dans le langage UML, un code assembleur plus compact que le code assembleur produit par les compilateurs de code. Malgré l’évolution croissante des compilateurs optimisés, les compilateurs les plus répandus comme le GCC (Gnu Compiler Collection) sont incapables d’effectuer certains types d’optimisations qu'il est possible d'effectuer à un plus haut niveau d'abstraction dans une phase de pré-génération de code. En effet, certaines informations (liées à la sémantique d’exécution du langage UML) sont perdues lors de la génération de code. Ces informations, utiles pour les optimisations de haut niveau, sont invisibles par le compilateur de code vue qu’il prend toutes les informations liées au système modélisé à partir du code généré. Nous proposons ainsi une nouvelle approche dirigée par les modèles pour le développement des systèmes à ressources limitées, qui élimine l’étape de la génération de code en remplaçant cette étape par une compilation directe des modèles. Nous avons développé le premier compilateur de modèles UML (GUML : le front-end UML pour le compilateur GCC) qui génère directement de l’assembleur (sans passer par un langage de programmation) à partir des modèles UML. GUML permet de compiler les classes, les activités et les machines à états UML. Il permet de générer, en compilant certaines machines à états, un code assembleur plus compact que le code assembleur produit par GCC. Deux optimisations de GCC sont améliorées : l’élimination de code mort et l’élimination des expressions redondantes. / Model-Based Development (MBD) provides an additional level of abstraction, the model, which allows dealing with the increasing complexity of systems. Models let engineers focus on the business aspect of the developed system and permits automatic treatments of these models with dedicated tools like for instance synthesis of system's application by automatic code generation. Embedded Systems are often constrained by their environment and/or the resources they own in terms of memory, energy consumption or performance requirements. Hence, an important problem to deal with in embedded system development is linked to the optimization of software part of those systems according to the resources provided by their platform. Although automatic code generation and the use of optimizing compilers bring some answers to application optimization issue, this thesis shows that optimization results may be enhanced by adding a new level of optimizations at the model level before the code generation step. Actually, during the code generation, an important part of the modeling language semantics which could be useful for optimization is lost, thus, making impossible some optimizations achievement. We propose in this thesis a novel MBD approach that compiles directly UML models. The biggest challenge for this approach –tackled in this thesis- is to propose a model compiler that is as efficient as code compiler. Our model compiler (GUML: the UML front end for GCC) performs optimizations that GCC is unable to perform resulting in a more compact assembly code. Two GCC optimizations are enhanced: the dead code elimination optimization and the block merging.

Le phénomène du cocktail party fait référence à notre remarquable capacité à nous concentrer sur une seule voix dans des environnements bruyants. Dans cette thèse, nous concevons, implémentons et évaluons une approche computationnelle nommée GCC-NMF pour résoudre ce problème. GCC-NMF combine l’apprentissage automatique non supervisé par la factorisation matricielle non négative (NMF) avec la méthode de localisation spatiale à corrélation croisée généralisée (GCC). Les atomes du dictionnaire NMF sont attribués au locuteur cible ou à l’interférence à chaque instant en fonction de leurs emplacements spatiaux estimés. Nous commençons par étudier GCC-NMF dans le contexte hors ligne, où des mélanges de 10 secondes sont traités à la fois. Nous développons ensuite une variante temps réel de GCC-NMF et réduisons par la suite sa latence algorithmique inhérente de 64 ms à 2 ms avec une méthode asymétrique de transformée de Fourier de courte durée (STFT). Nous montrons que des latences aussi faibles que 6 ms, dans la plage des délais tolérables pour les aides auditives, sont possibles sur les plateformes embarquées actuelles. Nous évaluons la performance de GCC-NMF sur des données publiquement disponibles de la campagne d’évaluation de séparation des signaux SiSEC. La qualité de séparation objective est quantifiée avec les méthodes PEASS, estimant les évaluations subjectives humaines, ainsi que BSS Eval basée sur le rapport signal sur bruit (SNR) traditionnel. Bien que GCC-NMF hors ligne ait moins bien performé que d’autres méthodes du défi SiSEC en termes de métriques SNR, ses scores PEASS sont comparables aux meilleurs résultats. Dans le cas de GCC-NMF en ligne, alors que les métriques basées sur le SNR favorisent à nouveau d’autres méthodes, GCC-NMF surpasse toutes les approches précédentes sauf une en termes de scores PEASS globaux, obtenant des résultats comparables au masque binaire idéale. Nous montrons que GCC-NMF augmente la qualité objective et les métriques d’intelligibilité STOI et ESTOI sur une large gamme de SNR d’entrée de -30 à 20 dB, avec seulement des réductions mineures pour les SNR d’entrée supérieurs à 20 dB. GCC-NMF présente plusieurs caractéristiques souhaitables lorsqu’on le compare aux approches existantes. Contrairement aux méthodes d’analyse de scène auditive computationnelle (CASA), GCC-NMF ne nécessite aucune connaissance préalable sur la nature des signaux d’entrée et pourrait donc convenir aux applications de séparation et de débruitage de source dans un grand nombre de domaines. Dans le cas de GCC-NMF en ligne, seule une petite quantité de données non étiquetées est nécessaire pour apprendre le dictionnaire NMF. Cela se traduit par une plus grande flexibilité et un apprentissage beaucoup plus rapide par rapport aux approches supervisées, y compris les solutions basées sur NMF et les réseaux neuronaux profonds qui reposent sur de grands ensembles de données étiquetées. Enfin, contrairement aux méthodes de séparation de source aveugle (BSS) qui reposent sur des statistiques de signal accumulées, GCC-NMF fonctionne indépendamment pour chaque trame, ce qui permet des applications en temps réel à faible latence. / Abstract: The cocktail party phenomenon refers to our remarkable ability to focus on a single voice in noisy environments. In this thesis, we design, implement, and evaluate a computational approach to solving this problem named GCC-NMF. GCC-NMF combines unsupervised machine learning via non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) with the generalized cross-correlation (GCC) spatial localization method. Individual NMF dictionary atoms are attributed to the target speaker or background interference at each point in time based on their estimated spatial locations. We begin by studying GCC-NMF in the offline context, where entire 10-second mixtures are treated at once. We then develop an online, instantaneous variant of GCC-NMF and subsequently reduce its inherent algorithmic latency from 64 ms to 2 ms with an asymmetric short-time Fourier transform (STFT) windowing method. We show that latencies as low as 6 ms, within the range of tolerable delays for hearing aids, are possible on current hardware platforms. We evaluate the performance of GCC-NMF on publicly available data from the Signal Separation Evaluation Campaign (SiSEC), where objective separation quality is quantified using the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-based BSS Eval and perceptually-motivated PEASS toolboxes. Though offline GCC-NMF underperformed other methods from the SiSEC challenge in terms of the SNR-based metrics, its PEASS scores were comparable with the best results. In the case of online GCC-NMF, while SNR-based metrics again favoured other methods, GCC-NMF outperformed all but one of the previous approaches in terms of overall PEASS scores, achieving comparable results to the ideal binary mask (IBM) baseline. Furthermore, we show that GCC-NMF increases objective speech quality and the STOI and ETOI speech intelligibility metrics over a wide range of input SNRs from -30 dB to 20 dB, with only minor reductions for input SNRs greater than 20 dB. GCC-NMF exhibits a number of desirable characteristics when compared existing approaches. Unlike computational auditory scene analysis (CASA) methods, GCC-NMF requires no prior knowledge about the nature of the input signals, and may thus be suitable for source separation and denoising applications in a wide range of fields. In the case of online GCC-NMF, only a small amount of unlabeled data is required to pre-train the NMF dictionary. This results in much greater flexibility and significantly faster training when compared to supervised approaches including NMF and deep neural network-based solutions that rely on large, supervised datasets. Finally, in contrast with blind source separation (BSS) methods that rely on accumulated signal statistics, GCC-NMF operates independently for each time frame, allowing for low latency, real-time applications.

Qatar is among the fastest growing developing countries in all fields. Since the State of Qatar gained independence from the United Kingdom, the Qatari government has been focusing on the formation of state institutions to keep pace with global development. In 1971, Qatar released the first civil and commercial law. The country established the first step towards the separation of civil and commercial transactions of Islamic law. However, the ever-changing nature of business and global economy requires significant economic and societal changes. With the increase of foreign investors in Qatar, there had to be a law governing arbitration in contracts. Therefore, the government promulgated the arbitration clause in commercial contracts; the first code of civil and commercial procedure contains a chapter of the arbitration. However, the provisions of arbitration included in this law are not compatible with the UNCITRAL Model Law. Although there is a shortage in literature regarding arbitration in Qatar, several studies discussed issues related to arbitration in Qatar and called for the adoption of a new separate arbitration law in Qatar compatible with the UNCITRAL one. This prompted Qatar to work on a new draft law of arbitration, especially after the ratification of the New York Convention 1985 by Qatar. However, these studies did not cover other factors which affect arbitration; such as cultural attitude towards arbitration and issues affecting the practice of arbitration in Qatar. Unlike previous studies regarding arbitration in Qatar, this thesis uses multi-methods to get an answer of the main question of the research, which is: “Will the new Arbitration Draft Law solve all the issues related to arbitration in Qatar, thereby attracting international companies to Qatar and its law for their arbitration?” The thesis reviews the related literature in the first stage. Then it analyses interviews which were held with a number of arbitration stakeholders, the recent Qatari draft law of arbitration, the GCC unified arbitration draft law and the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) draft law. After that it conducts a comparison between the current provisions of arbitration, the Qatari arbitration draft law and the GCC unified arbitration draft law in light of the UNCITRAL Model Law and the Egyptian Arbitration Law. This multi-methods study results in recommendations which are listed in its conclusion. It is worth mentioning that both the Qatari arbitration draft law and the QFC draft law are considered for the first time in a research study. Also, the interviews which were held for the purpose of this research enrich the outcome as the participants were chosen from various categories of arbitration stakeholder, where some of them represent official entities; such as the Legislation Department of the Ministries Council and some of them are high ranking officials of these entities; such as the Minister of Justice.

This project describes a concept of a library architecture that will enable to hide platform-specific behaviour of different MCUs under an united API that will enable the developers to develop portable applications. After a short summary of the current situation, the report describes the main principles of the library-to-be followed by definitions of behaviour of each module that can be controlled using the library. Then this report describes techniques used in the implementation and platform specifics. In the conclusion there is an idea of the direction in which the development could continue.

Within the South African context, the mining industry is a major employer and a significant contributor to the economy. Production costs are ever increasing and for this industry to survive and remain financially viable, efficient technologies are continuously being explored and implemented to ensure the industries sustainability now and in the future. In order for this to be achieved, sufficient and competent technical skills, in the form of artisans, technicians and engineers are required. The mining industry is currently experiencing a shortage of these skills. Twenty-one persons were interviewed, who are representative of three stakeholder groups: namely, regulatory bodies, educational institutions and mining companies to ascertain the challenges in terms of the technical skills and thereby, derive solutions for the industry. The data used to uncover the above was obtained using qualitative techniques applied to the three stakeholder groups. This research presents the responses of those in-depth interviews from the various stakeholders obtained over several months of research. The challenges within the industry are disclosed and practical solutions presented to mitigate those challenges.Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This exploratory research is based on an objectivist epistemology with a positivist theoretical perspective that deployed concurrent mixed methods (MMR) design through a quantitative administered survey alongside an in-depth qualitative analysis through interviews exploring the perspectives of leaders on EHS leadership and governance. The research literature review focused on EHS leadership, corporate governance and strongly related topics. This MMR research employed both an expert panel-validated survey and a semi-structured interview protocol which explored 9 themes which emerged from the literature review including EHS/Safety Leadership; Risk Management; Influence and Accountability. Due to pragmatics relating to the number of leaders accessed (N=30) the statistical analysis is limited to descriptive type statistics. Almost all respondents supported the monitoring role of the Board of Directors (BoD), but disagreed that the BoD should play an active role in risk management. Comparisons are drawn between the Oil and Gas and non-Oil and Gas organizations with interesting results especially in matters relating to risk management. Structured thematic content analysis yields that Safety Culture; Leadership; Influence and Accountability were the three leading themes accounting for just over 50% of the responses analysed. Many sub-themes have also emerged and are discussed. A Model of EHS Leadership and Governance was created and is presented which positions themes and factors that influence monitoring of EHS performance and ultimately risk management. The research can be considered as a unique contribution as a relatively small body of currently published work in this subject area, both globally and more so in the GCC.