Considerable resources worldwide are invested in the research and development of future transportation technology. The foreseen direction and therefore research of future personalised transportation is focused on Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) or hybrid combinations that use hydrogen fuel cells. These new transport energy systems are consider most to replace the current vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine (ICE). The research work presented in this thesis mainly focuses on the development of a software control system for future BEV prototype vehicles - a generic intelligent control system (GICS). The system design adopts a modular design concept and intelligent control. The whole system consists of four modules being communication, power supply, motor driver and transmission module. Each module uses a microcontroller as the brain and builds an embedded control system within the module. The control and communication between the modules is based on a group of specific parameters and the status of a state machine. In order to effectively implement intelligent control and simplify the system structure and programming, a generic intelligent fuzzy logic model that can be configured to a specific application with a near real-time buffered communication methodology is developed. The tests made on the fuzzy control model and the near real-time buffered communication gave a very positive outcome. The implementation of the fuzzy control and the communication methodology in each of the modules results in a communication between the modules with a steady speed, better reliability and system stability. These modules link together through the communication channels and form a multi-agent collaborative system (MACS). As the controllers are designed based on the parametric concept, the system is able to be implemented to future new modules and therefore allow prototype vehicle control systems to be developed more efficiently. The MACS is based on the core components of the control system - fuzzy logic controller (FLC), Serial Communication and Analogue input control software modules. Further work is carried out as an attempt to integrate the control software with a hardware design for a generic electric propulsion drive (GEPD). This thesis therefore outlines the design and considerations in software and hardware integration in addition to the GICS. The output from this thesis being the construction of soft programming modules for embedded microcontroller based control system has been accepted and presented at two international conferences; one in Wellington, New Zealand[1] the second in Acireale, Italy[2].

Considerable resources worldwide are invested in the research and development of future transportation technology. The foreseen direction and therefore research of future personalised transportation is focused on Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) or hybrid combinations that use hydrogen fuel cells. These new transport energy systems are consider most to replace the current vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine (ICE). The research work presented in this thesis mainly focuses on the development of a software control system for future BEV prototype vehicles - a generic intelligent control system (GICS). The system design adopts a modular design concept and intelligent control. The whole system consists of four modules being communication, power supply, motor driver and transmission module. Each module uses a microcontroller as the brain and builds an embedded control system within the module. The control and communication between the modules is based on a group of specific parameters and the status of a state machine. In order to effectively implement intelligent control and simplify the system structure and programming, a generic intelligent fuzzy logic model that can be configured to a specific application with a near real-time buffered communication methodology is developed. The tests made on the fuzzy control model and the near real-time buffered communication gave a very positive outcome. The implementation of the fuzzy control and the communication methodology in each of the modules results in a communication between the modules with a steady speed, better reliability and system stability. These modules link together through the communication channels and form a multi-agent collaborative system (MACS). As the controllers are designed based on the parametric concept, the system is able to be implemented to future new modules and therefore allow prototype vehicle control systems to be developed more efficiently. The MACS is based on the core components of the control system - fuzzy logic controller (FLC), Serial Communication and Analogue input control software modules. Further work is carried out as an attempt to integrate the control software with a hardware design for a generic electric propulsion drive (GEPD). This thesis therefore outlines the design and considerations in software and hardware integration in addition to the GICS. The output from this thesis being the construction of soft programming modules for embedded microcontroller based control system has been accepted and presented at two international conferences; one in Wellington, New Zealand[1] the second in Acireale, Italy[2].

Considerable resources worldwide are invested in the research and development of future transportation technology. The foreseen direction and therefore research of future personalised transportation is focused on Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) or hybrid combinations that use hydrogen fuel cells. These new transport energy systems are consider most to replace the current vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine (ICE). The research work presented in this thesis mainly focuses on the development of a software control system for future BEV prototype vehicles - a generic intelligent control system (GICS). The system design adopts a modular design concept and intelligent control. The whole system consists of four modules being communication, power supply, motor driver and transmission module. Each module uses a microcontroller as the brain and builds an embedded control system within the module. The control and communication between the modules is based on a group of specific parameters and the status of a state machine. In order to effectively implement intelligent control and simplify the system structure and programming, a generic intelligent fuzzy logic model that can be configured to a specific application with a near real-time buffered communication methodology is developed. The tests made on the fuzzy control model and the near real-time buffered communication gave a very positive outcome. The implementation of the fuzzy control and the communication methodology in each of the modules results in a communication between the modules with a steady speed, better reliability and system stability. These modules link together through the communication channels and form a multi-agent collaborative system (MACS). As the controllers are designed based on the parametric concept, the system is able to be implemented to future new modules and therefore allow prototype vehicle control systems to be developed more efficiently. The MACS is based on the core components of the control system - fuzzy logic controller (FLC), Serial Communication and Analogue input control software modules. Further work is carried out as an attempt to integrate the control software with a hardware design for a generic electric propulsion drive (GEPD). This thesis therefore outlines the design and considerations in software and hardware integration in addition to the GICS. The output from this thesis being the construction of soft programming modules for embedded microcontroller based control system has been accepted and presented at two international conferences; one in Wellington, New Zealand[1] the second in Acireale, Italy[2].

<p>Geographical indications designate products which have a specific geographical origin, which can either be national, regional or local. The subject is complicated since geographical indications arises a large number of questions There are EC regulations which regulate the protection of geographical indications, but since the field has not yet been exhaustively harmonized, the existence of national rules of protection is therefore still possible, which can lead to trade barriers between the member states. Consequently, one problem consists in whether it may be legitimate to restrict the free movement of goods by article 28 in the EC Treaty by referring to national rules of protection and to what extent such measures may be justified by article 30 or by the Cassis doctrine. An additional question consists in how the line between geographical indications and generic terms is to be established appropriately. Further, geographical indications are exposed to improper use by other dishonest commercial operators and therefore the possibilities of protection against unfair competition and misleading are also discussed in the thesis. Since there are several questions which are unanswered regarding geographical indications, the purpose of this essay is to analyze what kind of intellectual property right geographical indications constitute and how they are protected.</p>

<p>The question about how to determine the rank of a tensor has been widely studied in the literature. However the analytical methods to compute the decomposition of tensors have not been so much developed even for low-rank tensors.</p><p>In this report we present analytical methods for finding real and complex PARAFAC decompositions of 2 x 2 x 2 tensors before computing the actual rank of the tensor.</p><p>These methods are also implemented in MATLAB.</p><p>We also consider the question of how best lower-rank approximation gives rise to problems of degeneracy, and give some analytical explanations for these issues.</p>

As predicted by Gordon Moore, the number of transistors on a chip has roughly doubled every two years. Microprocessors featuring over a billion transistors are no longer science fiction. For example, Intel’s Itanium 9000 series and Intel’s Xeon 7400 series of processors feature 1.7 and 1.9 billion transistors respectively. To keep up with the emerging needs of contemporary very large scale integration (VLSI) design, industrial hardware description languages (HDLs) like Verilog and VHDL must be significantly enhanced. This thesis pinpoints some of the main shortcomings of the latest Verilog standard (IEEE 1364-2005) and shows how to overcome them by extending the language in a backward compatible way. To be able to cope with more complex circuits, well-understood higher-level abstraction mechanisms are needed. Verilog is already equipped with promising generative constructs making it possible to concisely describe a family of circuits as a parameterized module; however these constructs suffer from two problems: First, their expressivity is limited and second, they are not adequately supported by current tools. For instance, there are no static guarantees about the properties of the description generated as a result of instantiating a generic description with particular parameter values. Addressing both problems while remaining backward compatible led us to select a statically typed two-level languages (STTL) formal framework. By formalizing a core subset of Verilog as an STTL, we were able to define a static type system capable of: 1) checking the realizability of a description, 2) detecting bus width mismatches and array bounds violations, and 3) providing parametric guarantees on the resources required to realize a generic description. The power of the chosen framework is once more demonstrated as it also allows us to enrich the language with a new set of constructs that are designed to be expanded away when instantiated. To experiment with these ideas we implemented VPP, a Verilog Preprocessor with a built-in type checker. VPP is an unobtrusive tool accepting extended Verilog descriptions but generating descriptions compatible with any tool compliant with the Verilog standard. Our experience throughout this research showed that STTLs present a particularly suitable framework to formalize and implement generative features of a language. / Rice University, National Science Foundation (NSF) SoD award 0439017, Intel Corporation, Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Task ID 1403.001

Thesis (M.Pharm. (Pharmacy Practice))---North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Geographical indications designate products which have a specific geographical origin, which can either be national, regional or local. The subject is complicated since geographical indications arises a large number of questions There are EC regulations which regulate the protection of geographical indications, but since the field has not yet been exhaustively harmonized, the existence of national rules of protection is therefore still possible, which can lead to trade barriers between the member states. Consequently, one problem consists in whether it may be legitimate to restrict the free movement of goods by article 28 in the EC Treaty by referring to national rules of protection and to what extent such measures may be justified by article 30 or by the Cassis doctrine. An additional question consists in how the line between geographical indications and generic terms is to be established appropriately. Further, geographical indications are exposed to improper use by other dishonest commercial operators and therefore the possibilities of protection against unfair competition and misleading are also discussed in the thesis. Since there are several questions which are unanswered regarding geographical indications, the purpose of this essay is to analyze what kind of intellectual property right geographical indications constitute and how they are protected.

The question about how to determine the rank of a tensor has been widely studied in the literature. However the analytical methods to compute the decomposition of tensors have not been so much developed even for low-rank tensors. In this report we present analytical methods for finding real and complex PARAFAC decompositions of 2 x 2 x 2 tensors before computing the actual rank of the tensor. These methods are also implemented in MATLAB. We also consider the question of how best lower-rank approximation gives rise to problems of degeneracy, and give some analytical explanations for these issues.

A generic conflict model is developed to analyze international toxic waste disposal issues, and then, to provide feasible strategic resolutions for this serious environmental dispute. With the rapid growth of the global economy, toxic waste traffic from the advanced to developing nations has become a serious side effect of this globalization. The illegal transboundary movement of toxic wastes not only aggravates the burden on the poorer nations, but also negatively impacts the worldwide environment. In this thesis, the ongoing toxic waste disputes are divided into two stages consisting of the dumping prevention and dispute resolution stages. The analyses based on the methodology of Graph Model for Conflict Resolution are used in both stages in order to grasp the structure and implications of the conflict from a strategic viewpoint. The in-depth modeling of the toxic waste dumping disputes, which consist of historical and generic situations, specifies the involved parties and their options. By synthesizing the economic, political and legal factors, the relative preferences for each party can be determined. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the Decision Support System (DSS) GMCR II simplifies the processing of calculations. The analytical research furnishes investigators or other interested parties with possible resolutions for the disputes arising from an international waste dumping event. Sensitivity analyses are also conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the different situations that may occur in real-world cases. The case study of the Ivory Coast waste dumping controversy is used to demonstrate how to practically implement the generic multi-stage graph model.