Much effort has been spent over the last decade in producing so called "Machine Vision" systems for use in robotics, automated inspection, assembly and numerous other fields. Because of the large amount of data involved in an image (typically ¼ MByte) and the complexity of many algorithms used, the processing times required have been far in excess of real time on a VAX-class serial processor. We review a number of image understanding algorithms that compute a globally defined "state", and show that they may be computed using simple local operations that are suited to parallel implementation. In recent years, many massively parallel machines have been designed to apply local operations rapidly across an image. We review several vision machines. We develop an algebraic analysis of the performance of a vision machine and show that, contrary to the commonly-held belief, the time taken to relay images between serial streams can exceed by far the time spent processing. We proceed to investigate the roles that a variety of pipelining techniques might play. We then present three pipelined designs for vision, one of which has been built. This is a parallel pipelined bit slice convolution processor, capable of operating at video rates. This design is examined in detail, and its performance analysed in relation to the theoretical framework of the preceeding chapters. The construction and debugging of the device, which is now operational in its hardware is detailed.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Thesis advisor: Diana Pullin / It is widely accepted that school leadership has both a direct and indirect impact on student achievement. Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) Unified Leadership framework summarized a decade of work by numerous researchers identifying the five most effective leadership domains that influence student learning. Using that work as a conceptual framework, this qualitative case study analyzed one of the five interdependent leadership domains in an urban elementary school that succeeded in educating traditionally marginalized students and outperformed other schools with similar demographics in the district. This study identified and explored the actions that a principal in a high performing, urban school that served a historically marginalized population took to facilitate high-quality learning experience for students. This study reviewed documents and interviewed school and district level personnel to learn whether or not the school leader engaged in certain practices. The study found that the school leader engaged in many practices that facilitate a high-quality learning experience including monitoring instruction, assessment and curriculum, as well as maintaining a safe and orderly environment. Recommendations from this study include considering the diversity of students’ backgrounds as a source of strength and not something to be ignored. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to develop a generic model to be applied on to a Swedish company. In order to reduce variations in quality, production time and work routines.  The study starts by investigation of the relevance of this thesis and continues with providing relevant theories on the subject. Then a model was developed for continues improvement projects with different keys that can be applied in the different steps of the model. The keys show the importance of involving the employees in continuous improvements projects. The model is aimed to be applicable to different kinds of project and depending of the size of the project, different keys can be utilized. The purpose of the model in this thesis is to decrease variation in quality, production time and work routines at a case company. The case company in this study is International Färg AB who is a manufacture of protective coatings. During the testing phase of the model, planning, analysis and measurements has been performed in order to achieve suggestions that would lower the variation within the production at the case company.  The result of this thesis and the model is that with the use of the model developed in this thesis it is possible to achieve lower variations in the production. The thesis is aimed to be suitable to Swedish industrial companies. The authors provide a generic user-friendly model.  From the results recommendations to the case company has been developed. The thesis end with a discussion about topics not fully covered in the report.

In accordance with the federally mandated Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), every state is required to “develop and implement, on a continuous basis, a highway safety improvement program which has the overall objective of reducing the number and severity of crashes and decreasing the potential for crashes on all highways” (FHWA, 1979). The federal government via the HSIP provides a significant amount of funding that allows every state to improve the safety of their highway network. With such large amounts of federal funds involved, it becomes essential that state transportation agencies take appropriate measures to utilize these funds in the most cost effective manner. As part of this program, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) uses a formula known as the “Safety Improvement Index” (SII) for identification, ranking and selection of eligible projects. The SII is in essence used to rank potential projects by giving priority to projects that have a higher benefit-cost (B/C) ratio. Since the SII has not been updated within the last two decades, there is a need to determine whether the current formulation needs to be revised or updated. This concern has been reported in the literature. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the SII in its current functional form and its usefulness to rank and prioritize projects for safety improvement. The evaluation procedure proposed in this thesis uses sensitivity analyses to study the effects of different input variables on the SII. The sensitivity analysis is performed with respect to five critical variables chosen on the basis of a literature review. The five variables studied are the Interest Rate, Removal of PDO Crashes, Crash Reduction Factors, Crash Rates, and Crash – Flow Relationship. The focus of the evaluation is to compare the ranking of projects with respect to changes in the value of these input variables. The ranking are evaluated using various statistical methods, such as the Spearman Rank Order Correlation Test and Kendall’s Tau Test. The results of the analysis indicated that, although changes in the value of input variables affect the SII output, the ranking of projects is usually not affected, with the exception of the crash reduction factor variable. Hence, the same projects will be selected for safety improvement, even if different values are used in the SII. Therefore, it is recommended that the current formulation of the SII and the value of input variables used in the formula be retained by TxDOT for prioritizing safety improvement projects. However, it is suggested to examine the accuracy and uncertainty associated with reduction factors, since in some cases they were found to affect the ranking of projects.

In accordance with the federally mandated Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), every state is required to "develop and implement, on a continuous basis, a highway safety improvement program which has the overall objective of reducing the number and severity of crashes and decreasing the potential for crashes on all highways" (FHWA, 1979). The federal government via the HSIP provides a significant amount of funding that allows every state to improve the safety of their highway network. With such large amounts of federal funds involved, it becomes essential that state transportation agencies take appropriate measures to utilize these funds in the most cost effective manner. As part of this program, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) uses a formula known as the "Safety Improvement Index" (SII) for identification, ranking and selection of eligible projects. The SII is in essence used to rank potential projects by giving priority to projects that have a higher benefit-cost (B/C) ratio. Since the SII has not been updated within the last two decades, there is a need to determine whether the current formulation needs to be revised or updated. This concern has been reported in the literature. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the SII in its current functional form and its usefulness to rank and prioritize projects for safety improvement. The evaluation procedure proposed in this thesis uses sensitivity analyses to study the effects of different input variables on the SII. The sensitivity analysis is performed with respect to five critical variables chosen on the basis of a literature review. The five variables studied are the Interest Rate, Removal of PDO Crashes, Crash Reduction Factors, Crash Rates, and Crash -- Flow Relationship. The focus of the evaluation is to compare the ranking of projects with respect to changes in the value of these input variables. The ranking are evaluated using various statistical methods, such as the Spearman Rank Order Correlation Test and Kendall's Tau Test. The results of the analysis indicated that, although changes in the value of input variables affect the SII output, the ranking of projects is usually not affected, with the exception of the crash reduction factor variable. Hence, the same projects will be selected for safety improvement, even if different values are used in the SII. Therefore, it is recommended that the current formulation of the SII and the value of input variables used in the formula be retained by TxDOT for prioritizing safety improvement projects. However, it is suggested to examine the accuracy and uncertainty associated with reduction factors, since in some cases they were found to affect the ranking of projects.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 273-278). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 273-278). Also available on the Internet.

In order to produce products and services, companies are using various tangible assets such as production equipment and facilities. The goal of the maintenance function is to maintain these assets so they operate safely, efficiently and economically. This function includes technical, administrative and management activities, carried out in order to keep company’s assets in a state, or restore these to a state, in which they can perform the required functions. The activities should be planned and carried out in a way that allows for obtaining the required technical condition, availability, meets the safety requirements for humans and the environment, ensures quality of delivered products and services, and secures the anticipated service life of individual devices. Both effectiveness and efficiency of the maintenance function are very important to each company trying to operate with profit. As follows from the recent research, the performance of maintenance functions in most of the studied companies around the world is in general unsatisfactory, and the underlying reasons of the subnormal behavior are not sufficiently identified, understood and described.   The result of research presented in this thesis is an improvement support system based on an explanatory model of the maintenance function. This model shows the mechanisms interconnecting the motivations, intents and rationale behind the involved actors, entities and maintenance activities, and in this way gains understanding of how, and in what way the total performance of the maintenance function is affected, thereby supporting improvement decisions. As maintenance cost is a sharply increasing part of the operational costs, it is an evident target for operational and managerial improvement. This research area is strongly encouraged by industry, and is becoming a topic of increasing interest in the academia. / <p>QC 20151117</p>