This was a qualitative study looking at the experience of emotional connection in therapy from both clients’ and therapists’ perspectives. The aim was to see whether and how the experience of emotional connection was the same or different for each party; and whether and how it was connected to client change. It was an heuristic enquiry and explored the experiences of five client/therapist pairs including the researcher and the researcher’s therapist. The client and therapist in each co-researcher pair were interviewed separately about a session (chosen by the client) where both had experienced an emotional connection with each other (the researcher pair had a mutual dialogue about the experience). The interviews were then analysed using heuristic processes of immersion, incubation, illumination, explication and creative synthesis. The main findings were: (1) emotional connection was experienced on two different levels: a conscious, articulated level (the ‘manifest level’) and an unarticulated, subliminal level (the ‘hidden level’); (2) emotional connection was connected to client change on both levels; (3) the main ‘work’ of therapy took place on the manifest level; (4) however, healing of the client’s deepest, or primary hurt, took place at the hidden level; (5) at the hidden level there was a good emotional match between the client and therapist. The implications of this research are that the healing mechanisms within therapy may not always be under our conscious control and that for deep healing work it may be important for there to be a good fit at an emotional level between client and therapist.

No description available.

In order to achieve the high performance, we need to have an efficient scheduling of a parallelprogram onto the processors in multiprocessor systems that minimizes the entire executiontime. This problem of multiprocessor scheduling can be stated as finding a schedule for ageneral task graph to be executed on a multiprocessor system so that the schedule length can be minimize [10]. This scheduling problem is known to be NP- Hard.In multi processor task scheduling, we have a number of CPU’s on which a number of tasksare to be scheduled that the program’s execution time is minimized. According to [10], thetasks scheduling problem is a key factor for a parallel multiprocessor system to gain betterperformance. A task can be partitioned into a group of subtasks and represented as a DAG(Directed Acyclic Graph), so the problem can be stated as finding a schedule for a DAG to beexecuted in a parallel multiprocessor system so that the schedule can be minimized. Thishelps to reduce processing time and increase processor utilization. The aim of this thesis workis to check and compare the results obtained by Bee Colony algorithm with already generatedbest known results in multi processor task scheduling domain.

Recent work in air transit efficiency has increased en-route efficiency to a point that airport efficiency is the bottleneck. With the expected expansion of air transit it will become important to get the most out of airport capacity. Departure scheduling is an area where efficiency stands to be improved, but due to the complicated nature of the problem an optimal solution is not always forthcoming. A heuristic approach can be used to find a sub-optimal take-off order in a significantly faster time than the optimal solution can be found using known methods. The aim of this research is to explore such heuristics and catalog their solution characteristics. A greedy approach as well as a k-interchange approach were developed to find improved takeoff sequences. When possible, the optimal solution was found to benchmark the performance of the heuristics, in general the heuristic solutions were within 10-15% of the optimal solution. The heuristic solutions showed improvements of up to 15% over the first-in first-out order with a running time around 4 ms.

Based on previous research on cultural differences in analytic and holistic reasoning, I hypothesized that when explaining events, North Americans would be more likely than East Asians to expect causes to resemble events with respect to magnitude (i.e., big events stem from big causes and small events stem from small causes). In addition, I hypothesized that these differences would be explained by cultural differences in the tendency to reason analytically or holistically. In a series of studies, Canadian and Chinese participants judged the likelihood that high or low magnitude events were caused by high or low magnitude causes. Events included a disease outbreak, a delay in a business negotiation, and damage caused by a tornado moving through a city. In two studies, participants from both cultural groups expected events and their causes to correspond in magnitude. More importantly, as hypothesized, Canadians expected events and their causes to correspond in magnitude to a greater degree than did Chinese. In a third study, I ruled out a potential alternative explanation that Chinese may have simply been exhibiting a response bias. In a fourth study, in support of my hypothesis that these cultural differences were due to differences in the reasoning styles of Canadians and Chinese, I found that Canadians primed to reason holistically expected less cause-effect magnitude correspondence than did those primed to reason analytically. These findings have important theoretical implications for the research literature on attributions and on cultural and social cognition, as well as practical implications in the context of judgment and decision making. / Thesis (Ph.D, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-12 15:41:47.804

This research was initiated a result of a proposition described by Cleland and King in 1983. They proposed that the management of a portfolio-of-projects could be achieveda s a by-product of using a MIS containing project-management data. The hypothesis in this research takes their proposition further. It contends that the application of Pareto-based heuristics in the management of a portfolio-of-projects can improve on their approach. The research has been undertaken in Hong Kong. However, a review of the literature defines Hong Kong as a 'city-state' construction industry that is shown to be similar to national industries elsewhere. On this basis, the research establishes its validity for the general-case. Two qualitative surveys have been completed to identify the current methods used by Hong Kong contractors and by Hong Kong consultants for the management of their portfolios-of-projects. These elements of the research did not find evidence that in general, firms used a MIS that transformed project-level performance data to manage portfolios-of-projects. In this respect, there was no notable evidence of the adoption of the project-to-portfolio MIS data-pipeline described by Cleland and King. These surveys did not provide evidence that the commonly used 'individual review' or 'spreadsheet analysis' of multi-project data for portfolio management included prioritisation to identify projects of most significance to the outcome of the portfolio. Empirical data from the public works element of the Hong Kong construction industry is used in simulations of portfolio management to test the hypothesis along with a longitudinal grounded case study of the implementation of a portfolio/project MIS within the Hong Kong Government (HKG SAR). This case study provided practical experimentation through the quantitative measurement of 'before' and 'after' effects of a change to project-based multi-project management techniques that fitted the Cleland and King model. A qualitative survey has been completed to assess the degree of success and User satisfaction with this practical experimentation. The results of these elements of the research are taken to mean that the hypothesis is supported in principle. The final element of the research uses the empirical data to investigate the effectiveness of basing success for the portfolio-of-projects largely on the outcome of the important projects within the portfolio. Monte Carlo techniques are used to simulate an achievable excellent performance for the projects deemed as significant within the portfolio whilst the outcome for the other projects is unchanged. The simulated improved performance for the significant projects is based upon a derived probability-distribution-function (PDF) that represents the top twenty percent of project achievement for the portfolio-of-projects. The simulated outcome provides evidence in support of the hypothesis. With the exception of one of the ten cases tested, the theoretical application of excellent outcomes for the significant twenty percent of the number of projects using Monte Carlo techniques results in a worthwhile improved outcome for the portfolio as a whole. In the exceptional case, the actual result was already in agreement with the theoretical proposition. All ten cases, thereby showed the hypothesis to be true within the specifics and constraints of this research.

Although numerous theoretical traditions postulate that human fairness depends on the ratio of costs-to-benefits, theory and empirical data remain divided on the direction of the effect. Particularly, answers to the following questions have remained unclear: how cost/benefit ratios affect people’s fairness decision-making during resource allocations, how cost/benefit ratios affect people’s emotions and cognition when they receive fair or unfair treatments, whether people are intuitively selfish or fair, and how cost/benefit ratios of sharing affect it. To address these questions, I conducted three lines of studies in Chapters 2 to 4 of this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I examined how cost/benefit ratios of sharing affect people to make fair or unfair decisions in resource allocations. Results showed that more participants acted fairly when the costs were equal to the benefits as compared to when the costs were higher or lower than the benefits. Shifting from resource dividers to receivers, in Chapter 3 I tested people’s emotional responses and cognitive judgements when they receive fair or unfair treatments at different cost/benefit ratios. My findings revealed that people felt more negative under unfair treatments when the costs were equal to the benefits as compared to when the costs were higher or lower than the benefits. Findings from Chapter 2 and 3 suggested an even-split heuristic: When the costs were equal to the benefits and thus the even-split was fair, more people tended to make fair decisions, and people felt more negative about receiving an unfair offer. Building on these findings, Chapter 4 tested the even-split heuristic using a fast-slow dual process framework and proposed the Value-Heuristic Framework. Results in Chapter 4 showed that people took the shortest time to make the even-and-fair decision (i.e., the even-split was also fair). I also found that people took longer to make the even-but-not-fair decision (i.e., giving an even-split, which results in uneven payoffs), and the longest time to make the not-even-but-fair decision (i.e., giving an uneven-split that results in even payoffs). Based upon the overall findings from my three empirical chapters. I formulated a conceptual framework for explaining and predicting people’s fairness decision-making.

Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons au problème du transport à la demande. Nous proposons des heuristiques pour résoudre ce problème de manière rapide et efficace. Dans cette thèse, nous traitons trois problèmes : le premier est le Dial-a-ride (DARP standard). Pour ce problème, nous proposons des heuristiques basées sur la technique d’insertion et une technique de propagation de contrainte. Nous proposons aussi la procédure SPLIT et des opérateurs classiques de recherche locale pour résoudre ce problème. Le second est le DARP multicritères pour laquelle nous proposons un schéma de type ELS. Le troisième est un problème de transport à la demande avec contraintes financières (DARPF), qui est une extension de DARP. Nous résolvons ce problème grâce à une heuristique d’insertion et une technique de propagation de contraintes. La fonction objectif détermine les caractéristiques des tournées. Des résultats expérimentaux montrent que nos (méta-) heuristiques donnent des résultats plus favorables aux clients (meilleure qualité de service) / As part of this thesis, we investigate the vehicle routing problem. We propose heuristics to solve this problem quickly and efficiently. In this thesis, we deal with three problems: the first is the Dial-a-ride problem. For this problem, we propose heuristics based on the technique of insertion and a constraint propagation technique. We propose also the procedure SPLIT and some operators of local research to solve this problem. The second is the multi-criteria DARP for which we propose an ELS framework. The third is a DARP problem with financial constraints (DARPF), which is an extension of DARP. We solve this problem thanks to insertion heuristics using a constraint propagation technique. The objective function determines the characteristics of the tour. Experimental results show that our (meta-) heuristics give results more favorable to customers (better quality of service)

No description available.

Volvo Group’s cab plant in Umeå produces cab bodies and consists of three operating areas; the Stamping and parts production, the Body in White and the Paint shop. Today the plant produces around XXX cabs/week, but the goal is to reach the invested capacity of XXX cabs/week. In order to increase the production capacity, the efficiency of both the manual and the automated processes need to be improved. Unlike the manual processes in where the capacity can be increased by enlarged workforce, the automated processes need to be optimized. Today the cabs are produced in the same order as the orders are received. The cab plant wants to investigate if the capacity of the automated segment in the Body in White unit can be increased by changing the order in the production sequence. This culminates in the following problem definition:  Is there untapped potential of the Body in White that can be achieved by an optimization of the production sequence? If so, how can Volvo Group’s cab plant in Umeå utilize this knowledge in the production planning process? The objective of the project was achieved by combining discrete event simulation with a heuristic optimization approach. The results shows that long batches in the production sequence limit the throughput of the system. By spreading the unfavorable subsequences of batches evenly over the production sequence, the total throughput of the Body in White can be increased by 52 cabs/week. / Volvokoncernens hyttfabrik i Umeå producerar förarhytter och är uppdelad i tre driftsområden; pressning och detaljtillverkning, hyttsammansättning och ytbehandling. Idag producerar fabriken ca XXX hytter/vecka, men möjlighet finns att nå upp till den investerade kapaciteten på XXX hytter/vecka. För att kunna öka produktionskapaciteten behöver både de manuella och de automatiserade processerna effektiviseras. Till skillnad från de manuella processerna, där kapaciteten kan ökas genom att öka antalet operatörer, behöver de automatiserade processerna optimeras. Idag produceras hytterna i samma ordning som beställningarna kommer in. Hyttfabriken vill undersöka om det finns en möjlighet att öka kapaciteten för den automatiserade processen i Body in White genom att optimera produktionssekvensen. Detta leder fram till följande problemformulering: Finns det outnyttjad potential i Body in White som kan uppnås genom att optimera produktionssekvensen? Hur kan Volvokoncernens hyttfabrik i Umeå utnyttja denna kunskap vid planering av produktionen? Målet med projektet har uppnåtts genom att kombinera diskret händelsesimulering med optimering genom heuristiker. Resultatet visar att stora batcher av samma variant i produktionen begränsar genomströmningen i processen. Genom att bland annat sprida ut de ogynnsamma delsekvenserna jämnt över produktionssekvensen kan den totala genomströmningen i Body in White ökas med 52 hytter/vecka.