Large-scale voting usability problems have changed the outcomes of several recent elections. The 2006 election in Sarasota County, Florida was one such incident, where the number of votes lost was nearly 50 times greater than the margin of victory for the US Representative race. Multiple hypotheses were proposed to explain this incident, with prevailing theories focused on malicious software, touchscreen miscalibration or poor ballot design, Study I aimed to empirically determine whether Sarasota voters unintentionally skipped the critical US Representative race due to poor ballot design. The Sarasota ballot was replicated initially, then header highlighting and number of races presented on the first screen were manipulated. While the presentation of multiple races had a significant effect on undervotes in the US Representative race, header highlighting did not. Nearly 20% of all voters (27 of 137) skipped the race their first time on that screen, an even greater undervote rate than that originally seen in Sarasota. In conjunction with other research, Study I results strongly suggests that the 2006 Sarasota election was almost certainly a human factors problem. A cognitive model of human voters was developed based on Study I data. Model predictions were then compared with behavioral data from Study 2, in which participants voted on a replica of the Charlotte County, Florida 2006 ballot.

In CANDU reactors, under normal operating conditions, the inlet headers collect and distribute single-phase liquid flow (heavy water) to the fuel cooling channels via the feeders. However, under some postulated loss of coolant accidents, the inlet headers may receive two-phase fluid (steam/water) and the fluid forms a stratified region inside the header. To predict the thermalhydraulic behaviour of headers for the reactor safety analysis, the two-phase flow distribution within the headers and through the feeders must be modelled. In order to analyse the two-phase flow behaviour of a scaled CANDU inlet header / a transparent and instrumented version of a header with 5 feeders was previously built in the Mechanical Engineering Department of Middle East Technical University (METU-Two Phase Flow Test Facility / METU-TPFTF). The aim of this study is to investigate two-phase flow distribution through multiple outlets from such a horizontal drum both numerically and experimentally. For this purpose, three-dimensional incompressible finite difference equations in cylindrical coordinates were derived by using two-fluid model to simulate adiabatic two-phase flow (air/water) in the header numerically. The discretized equations were then programmed into a computer code which was developed specifically for modelling the header type geometry. A method based on the principles of Implicit Multi Field (IMF) technique has been utilised to solve those equations. The solution algorithm was tested by using some numerical benchmark problems. A number of experimental tests covering single and two-phase flow distribution through outlet pairs from the header were performed. Void fractions and flow rates obtained from these tests are in good agreement with the code results. The code also predicts the void fraction and pressure distribution in the header satisfactorily.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-11T14:03:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fuad M Abinader Junior.pdf: 1012469 bytes, checksum: 83006b70c65e7b5ac0b070b259981f64 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-04-13 / The current wireless networks development scenario indicates that mobile VoIP applications are increasing their appeal among consumers, which creates an increasing demand for bandwidth consuption. However, bandwidth availability for VoIP applications is restricted by phisical and regulatory means. Header compression algorithms are one of the most used bandwidth optimization techniques for VoIP applications in wireless networks. This dissertation presents a performance evaluation of cooperative header compression algoritms for VoIP applications in wireless networks. The results indicate that the use of the single-channel cooperative approach leads to excelent results in terms of bandwidth optimization alied with robust context update. Also, the results indicate that the multi-channel cooperative approach has serious issues regarding parallel asyncrhonous VoIP connections. / O cenário atual do desenvolvimento das redes sem fio indica que o apelo por aplicações VoIP móveis está crescendo entre os consumidores, o que gera uma demanda cada vez maior de consumo de largura de banda. No entanto, a disponibilidade de largura de banda para aplicações VoIP é limitada tanto pelo meio físico quanto por regulamentações governamentais. O uso de algoritmos de compressão de cabeçalho é uma das técnicas mais usadas para otimização de largura de banda para aplicações VoIP em redes sem fio. Esta dissertação apresenta uma avaliação de desempenho de algoritmos de compressão de cabeçalhos cooperativos para aplicações VoIP em redes sem fio. Os resultados indicam que a utilização do algoritmo cooperativo mono-canal leva a excelentes resultados em termos de otimização de largura de banda com a manutenção das atualizações de contexto. Além disso, os resultados indicam que o uso do algoritmo cooperativo multi-canal possui sérias restrições quando utilizado em conjunto com conexões VoIP paralelas e assíncronas.

One of the major advances that has been happening in the use of communication technologies, is the gradual replacement of IPv4 by the IPv6. This change provides several enhancements, although the transmission performance is relatively low, by considering the new addressing standard, which becomes 128 bits in IPv6, compared to 32 bits in IPv4, increasing the size of the resultant header and the communication overhead. This work has as main objective the development of a method for the minimization of the IPv6 header, seeking to increase the performance of data transmission in a local area network. Practical tests have shown that the proposed solution enables an improvement in network performance, increasing data throughput, in addition to decreasing latency and bandwidth utilization in the transmission of packets between two devices. / Um dos principais avanços que vem ocorrendo na utilizazação de tecnologias de comunicação, é a substituição gradativa do protocolo IPv4 pelo IPv6. Essa mudança apresenta diversas melhorias, embora o desempenho na transmissão seja relativamente menor ao considerar o novo padrão de endereçamento, que passa de 32 bits no IPv4, para 128 bits no IPv6, aumentando o tamanho do cabeçalho resultante e o overhead de comunicação. Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo o desenvolvimento de um método para a minimização do cabeçalho IPv6, buscando o aumento de desempenho na transmissão de dados em uma rede local. Testes práticos demonstraram que a solução proposta permite uma melhora de desempenho na rede, com o aumento da vazão de dados, além da diminuição da latência e da utilização de banda na transmissão de pacotes entre dois dispositivos.

Abstract Substantially growing data traffic over wireless networks poses increased challenges for mobile network operators in deploying sufficient network resources and managing user mobility. This dissertation considers these challenges to providing satisfactory Quality of Service (QoS) for end-users and studies solutions for better utilization of the heterogeneous network environment. First, the dissertation examines what solutions mobile devices and network management entities can use to dynamically collect valid cross-layer information from different network entities. Cross-layer information allows monitoring of the condition of the network in multiple layers on a user and application basis. The second research topic considers the techniques the network management entities can use to improve resource usage in wireless networks based on the collected cross-layer information. The IEEE 802.21 standard, specified to facilitate handovers between heterogeneous networks, is used as the basis for cross-layer information delivery. This dissertation also focuses on utilization of the standard beyond the inter-access technology handovers. In order to improve resource usage in wireless networks dynamically, event delivery enhancements are proposed for the standard so that it better applies to the requirements of different techniques. Such techniques are traffic priority adjustment, traffic adaptation, packet aggregation, and network protocol header compression. The results show that when a handover is not feasible, these techniques effectively allow sharing of the limited radio resources for the user data according to applications’ importance and type. Mobility management is studied in terms of network information service, one of the main services of IEEE 802.21. The thesis proposes enhancing the information service with a base station cell coverage area database. The database provides significant improvements for the selection of a handover target in a dense base station environment. With all the results taken together, the dissertation provides mobile network operators various means to improve the usage of wireless networks on the basis of applications’ varying QoS requirements. / Tiivistelmä Voimakkaasti kasvava langattomien tietoverkkojen dataliikenne aiheuttaa verkko-operaattoreille haasteita tarjota riittävät verkkoresurssit ja hallita käyttäjien liikkuvuutta. Väitöskirja huomioi nämä haasteet tarjota loppukäyttäjille tyydyttävä palvelunlaatu (QoS) ja tutkii ratkaisuja, joilla heterogeenistä verkkoympäristöä voidaan hyödyntää tehokkaammin. Aluksi väitöskirja tutkii, mitä ratkaisuja päätelaitteet ja verkkohallintatoimijat voivat käyttää keräämään protokollakerrosten välistä (cross-layer) tietoa eri verkkotoimijoilta. Protokollakerrosten välinen tieto mahdollistaa verkon tilan seuraamisen usealla eri kerroksella käyttäjä- ja sovelluskohtaisesti. Toinen tutkimusaihe tarkastelee protokollakerrosten välistä tietoa hyödyntäviä tekniikoita, joita verkonhallintatoimijat voivat käyttää tehostamaan resurssien käyttöä langattomissa verkoissa. IEEE 802.21-standardia, joka on määritetty helpottamaan verkonvaihtoja heterogeenisten verkkojen välillä, käytetään pohjana protokollakerrosten välisen tiedon jakelulle. Väitöskirjassa keskitytään standardin hyödyntämiseen myös muussa kuin verkkoteknologioiden välisen verkonvaihdon yhteydessä. Väitöskirja ehdottaa parannuksia standardin tapahtumatietovälitykseen, jotta se täyttäisi paremmin eri tekniikoiden asettamat vaatimukset dynaamisesti toteutettavista toimista langattomien verkkojen resurssikäytön tehostamiseksi. Nämä tekniikat ovat liikenteen prioriteetin muutokset, liikenteen adaptointi, pakettien yhdistäminen ja verkkoprotokollaotsikoiden pakkaus. Tulokset osoittavat, että kun tukiasema- tai verkonvaihto ei ole mahdollinen, nämä tekniikat mahdollistavat rajattujen verkkoresurssien jakamisen tehokkaasti sovellusten tärkeyden ja tyypin mukaan. Liikkuvuudenhallintaa tutkitaan verkkoinformaatiopalvelun, joka on myös yksi IEEE 802.21-standardin pääpalveluista, kautta. Väitöskirja ehdottaa, että informaatiopalvelua tehostetaan liittämällä siihen tietokanta tukiasemasolujen peittoalueista. Tietokanta tehostaa huomattavasti verkonvaihdon kohteen valintaa tiheissä tukiasemaympäristöissä. Kun väitöskirjan tulokset huomioidaan kokonaisuutena, väitöskirja tarjoaa verkko-operaattoreille useita tapoja tehostaa langattomien verkkojen käyttöä sovellusten vaihtelevien palvelunlaatuvaatimusten perusteella.

Large air-cooled heat exchangers (ACHEs) are most popularly implemented in the petrochemical and power industries at arid locations. They operate on a simple concept of convective heat transfer, whereby air in the surrounding atmosphere is caused to flow across a tube bundle, which in turn transports a process fluid. The distribution and direction of the process fluid flow may furthermore be guided via a set of appropriately located header boxes, which essentially consist of a collection of welded flat plates and nozzle attachments. Perforations on one of the faces of these boxes serve as an interface to the tube bundle. The overall design and construction of an ACHE is commonly regulated by an American Petroleum Institute (API) standard, which is required to be used in conjunction with acceptable design codes. In spite of this, the design of certain header box configurations remains of prominent concern. It is the focus of the present study to investigate the approach adopted for a header box variant labelled as the removable cover type. In this configuration, one of the plates used to construct the header box is fastened and sealed by a collection of bolted joints and a gasket, allowing it to be removed. One appropriate design code for the header box equipment is the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) boiler and pressure vessel code. However, it provides no specific approach pertaining to the removable cover design. Instead it has been commonplace in industry for a number of aspects from this code to be synthesized, together with a collection of assumptions surrounding the header box behaviour, into an all encompassing design by rule approach. In this approach, the header box behaviour is accepted as being planar, whilst circumstances such as nozzle attachments and associated loading would suggest that a more comprehensive approach should be undertaken. The aim of the present study is therefore to critically evaluate the current practice, and establish its adequacy. To do so, a detailed three-dimensional finite element model (FEM) of an example header box design is developed. Subsequent comparisons with the stress distribution predicted via current practice show that the existing analytical model gives inaccurate and, in cases, overly conservative results. A new analytical approach developed from rigid frame theory is demonstrated to provide improved correlation with FEM. The linear elastic design by analysis approach, presented in the ASME code, is also utilised as a method for establishing design adequacy. Results obtained via design by analysis incorporating the finite element method are shown to be less conservative than those arising from design by rule methods. The design by analysis approach is also used to conduct a more detailed investigation of nozzle placement and external loading. In general, the effect of including a nozzle did not result in a significant increase in side plate stress, with failure more likely to occur within the nozzle wall. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering / unrestricted

The objective of the present thesis research is to apply state-of-the-art experimental and data analysis techniques to the study of gas-liquid pipe flows, with a focus on conditions occurring in header-feeder systems of nuclear reactors under different accident scenarios. Novel experimental techniques have been proposed for the identification of the flow regime and measurement of the flow rates of both phases in gas-liquid flows. These techniques were automated, non-intrusive and economical, which ensured that their use would be feasible in industrial as well as laboratory settings. Measurements of differential pressure and the gas and liquid flow rates were collected in vertical upwards air-water flow at near-atmospheric pressure. It was demonstrated that the probability density function of the normalized differential pressure was indicative of the flow regime and using non-linear dimensionality reduction (the Elastic Maps Algorithm), it was possible to automate the process of identifying the flow regime from the differential pressure signal. The relationship between the probability density function and the power spectral density of normalized differential pressure with the gas and liquid flow rates in air-water pipe flow was also established and a machine learning algorithm (using Independent Component Analysis and Artificial Neural Networks) was proposed for the estimation of the phase flow rates from these properties. The proposed methods were adapted for use with single and dual conductivity wire-mesh sensors in vertical upwards and downwards air--water flows. A thorough evaluation of the performance and measurement uncertainty of wire-mesh sensors in gas-liquid flows was also performed. Lastly, measurements of the flow distribution in feeder tubes supplied with air-water mixtures by a simplified header model were collected and correlated to the observed flow patterns in the header.

Las redes ópticas de paquetes se han convertido en los últimos años en uno de los temas de vanguardia en el campo de las tecnologías de comunicaciones. El procesado de cabeceras es una de las funciones más importantes que se llevan a cabo en nodos intermedios, donde un paquete debe ser encaminado a su destino correspondiente. El uso de tecnología completamente óptica para las funciones de encaminamiento y reconocimiento de cabeceras reduce el retardo de procesado respecto al procesado eléctrico, disminuyendo de ese modo la latencia en el enlace de comunicaciones. Existen diferentes métodos de procesado de datos para implementar el reconocimiento de cabeceras. El objetivo de este trabajo es la propuesta de una nueva arquitectura para el procesado de cabeceras basado en el uso de puertas lógicas completamente ópticas. Estas arquitecturas tienen como elemento clave el interferómetro Mach-Zehnder basado en el amplificador óptico de semiconductor (SOA-MZI), y utilizan el efecto no lineal de modulación cruzada de fase (XPM) en los SOAs para realizar dicha funcionalidad. La estructura SOA-MZI con XPM es una de las alternativas más atractivas debido a las numerosas ventajas que presenta, como por ejemplo los requisitos de baja energía para las señales de entrada, su diseño compacto, una elevada relación de extinción (ER), regeneración de la señal y el bajo nivel de chirp que introducen. Este trabajo se ha centrado en la implementación de la funcionalidad lógica XOR. Mediante esta función se pueden realizar diversas funcionalidades en las redes ópticas. Se proponen dos esquemas para el reconocimiento de cabeceras basados en el uso de la puerta XOR. El primer esquema utiliza puertas en cascada. El segundo esquema presenta una arquitectura muy escalable, y se basa en el uso de un bucle de realimentación implementado a la salida de la puerta. Asimismo, también se presentan algunas aplicaciones del procesado de cabeceras para el encaminamiento de paquetes basadas en el uso d / Martínez Canet, JM. (2006). Photonic logic-gates: boosting all-optical header processing in future packet-switched networks [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/1874 / Palancia

The master's thesis is focused on a design of optimal working speed of auger and belt transporter which are parts of Power Flow header for standard type of combine harvester. In the master's thesis author suggest a new simplified theory of crop flow inside the Power Flow header. The thesis contain the factors which can affect the crop flow and comparison between the Power Flow and competitor's header. The thesis also contain geometrical characteristics of crop for four types of cereal.

Fakturor är en viktig källa av information för företag. Två exempel på viktiga fält i en faktura kan vara, hur mycket pengar som ska betalas och faktura id. På grund av olika format och innehåll i fakturor som skiljer sig åt är extraktionen av information från dessa fakturor ofta en manuell process som kräver mycket tid. För att kunna spara viktig information från semi-strukturerade dokument som fakturor så måste vissa företag lägga ner mycket manuellt arbete. Detta arbete inkluderar att behöva förstå fakturan och därefter veta vilket innehåll som är av intresse för företaget. Detta arbete kan ta mycket tid och därför hade en automatisering av denna process varit av stort intresse. I denna forskningen används named entity recognition för att lösa problemet. De frågor som forskningen besvarar är: Hur effektiv named entity recognition är för klassificering av rubriker i fakturor, samt hur mycket effektiviteten kan öka vid komplettering av ytterligare komponenter. Named entity recognition används för att kategorisera entiteter som i detta fallet är rubriker för fält i fakturor. Modellen som skapas ska avgöra om rubriker i fakturan kan kategoriseras under någon av kategorierna: Invoice number, invoice date, due date, customer number, total amount, vat code, vat amount eller currency. Forskningen försöker endast göra en proof of concept för att se om denna algoritm kan användas för att minska tiden av manuellt arbete. Produktionsmodellen som skapas evalueras med måttet f1-score. Den får med denna metod resultatet 79 av 100. Detta resultatet antyder på att named entity recognition kan användas i ett verkligt scenario för att identifiera rubriker av intresse i en faktura. Men för att få så bra resultat som möjligt så bör modellen kombineras med en lösning som identifierar fält med hjälp av dess data. / Invoices are an important source of information for businesses. Two examples of important fields in an invoice could be the amount of money to be paid and the invoice Id. Due to the different formats and content of invoices, the extraction of information from these is often a manual and time consuming process. In order to save important information from semi-structured documents such as invoices, some companies have to put in a lot of manual work. This work includes understanding the invoice and then knowing what content is of interest to the company. This work can take a lot of time and therefore an automation of this process would be of great interest. In this research named entity recognition is used to solve the mentioned problem. The topics for this research are: How effective named entity recognition is for classification of headers in invoices, as well as how much the efficiency can be improved by complementing with further components. Named entity recognition is used to categorize entities. In this case the entities are the headings of the invoice. The model that is created must determine whether headings in the invoice can be categorized under one of the following categories: Invoice number, invoice date, due date, customer number, total amount, vat code, vat amount or currency. This research tries to make a proof of concept to discover if this algorithm can be used to reduce the time spent on manual work. The production model that is created is evaluated with the f1-score measurement. With this method, it gets a result of 79 out of 100. This result indicates that named entity recognition can be used by companies in real-world scenarios to identify headings in invoices. But to get the best results possible, the model should also be combined with a solution that identifies fields using its corresponding data.