<p>Portable stream programming language (PSPL) is a language for baseband application</p><p>programming on reconfigurable architectures. The first step in its development has been</p><p>completed. A parser has been provided for the front end of the PSPL compiler. The syntax</p><p>of the language has been fixed to allow for easy parses. The scanner and the parser</p><p>where generated using automatic tools (scanner and parser generators) which rely on</p><p>complex mathematical algorithms for their generation. Abstract syntax (data structures</p><p>that preserve the source program so that program structure is evident) was implemented</p><p>for the parser using a syntax separate from interpretation style of programming. Tests were</p><p>carried out to ensure that the correct data structures were generated. The final outcome</p><p>is a parser that other phases of the compiler can depend on for onward transmission of</p><p>the source program in an unambiguous manner. The development of subsequent phases</p><p>of the compiler will form the next logical step in the processes of transforming PSPL to</p><p>a stand alone language.</p>

<p>The after market is of great importance of a company’s competitiveness and an increasing part of its revenues can be derived from it. Remanufacturing, in focus of this thesis, is a great business opportunity and the European market has an enormous growth potential. In the USA it is a major business and the automotive industry, targeted in this thesis, sells approximately 60 million remanufactured automotive products compared to 15 million products in Europe for an equivalent stock of vehicles</p><p>Compared to manufacturing, the remanufacturing environment is a more complex business due to the high degree of uncertainty in the production process, mainly caused by two factors: the quantity and quality of returned cores. Overall, seven characteristics that make the remanufacturing material flow harder to control have been identified. Emerging in the 1990’s the concept of Lean production is a well-known method for improving the manufacturing capabilities of a company. Lean production, which is said to increase productivity, decrease lead-time and costs and enhance quality, is widely adopted.</p><p>In this thesis, the purpose is to explore what characteristics of the remanufacturing environment that can hinder the implementation of Lean production principles of material flows and how Lean principles can be employed in a remanufacturing environment.</p><p>In accordance, the theories of Lean production and Remanufacturing are used and the research methodology chosen that of a case study. To assess material flow, the production flows of five major product groups in a car engine are assessed. For the collection of data, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) methodology has been used.</p><p>The main result about material flows and how Lean principles can be employed in a remanufacturing environment have resulted in eight generic proposals. The main conclusion from these proposals is that the inherent characteristics of variable processing times and uncertainty in materials recovered have major negative impact for implementing a lean production process. Vice versa, given an accurate supply of parts for reassembly, all the principles of Lean production can be fully implemented in the phases of reassembly and testing.</p>

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Montana, 2006. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed Mar. 23, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 226-229).

The after market is of great importance of a company’s competitiveness and an increasing part of its revenues can be derived from it. Remanufacturing, in focus of this thesis, is a great business opportunity and the European market has an enormous growth potential. In the USA it is a major business and the automotive industry, targeted in this thesis, sells approximately 60 million remanufactured automotive products compared to 15 million products in Europe for an equivalent stock of vehicles Compared to manufacturing, the remanufacturing environment is a more complex business due to the high degree of uncertainty in the production process, mainly caused by two factors: the quantity and quality of returned cores. Overall, seven characteristics that make the remanufacturing material flow harder to control have been identified. Emerging in the 1990’s the concept of Lean production is a well-known method for improving the manufacturing capabilities of a company. Lean production, which is said to increase productivity, decrease lead-time and costs and enhance quality, is widely adopted. In this thesis, the purpose is to explore what characteristics of the remanufacturing environment that can hinder the implementation of Lean production principles of material flows and how Lean principles can be employed in a remanufacturing environment. In accordance, the theories of Lean production and Remanufacturing are used and the research methodology chosen that of a case study. To assess material flow, the production flows of five major product groups in a car engine are assessed. For the collection of data, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) methodology has been used. The main result about material flows and how Lean principles can be employed in a remanufacturing environment have resulted in eight generic proposals. The main conclusion from these proposals is that the inherent characteristics of variable processing times and uncertainty in materials recovered have major negative impact for implementing a lean production process. Vice versa, given an accurate supply of parts for reassembly, all the principles of Lean production can be fully implemented in the phases of reassembly and testing.

GPU-based raycasting is the state-of-the-art rendering technique for interactive volume visualization. The ray traversal is usually implemented in a fragment shader, utilizing the hardware in a way that was not originally intended. New programming interfaces for stream processing, such as CUDA, support a more general programming model and the use of additional device features, which are not accessible through traditional shader programming. In this paper we propose a slab-based raycasting technique that is modeled specifically to use these features to accelerate volume rendering. This technique is based on experience gained from comparing fragment shader implementations of basic raycasting to implementations directly translated to CUDA kernels. The comparison covers direct volume rendering with a variety of optional features, e.g., gradient and lighting calculations. Our findings are supported by benchmarks of typical volume visualization scenarios. We conclude that new stream processing models can only gain a small performance advantage when directly porting the basic raycasting algorithm. However, they can be advantageous through novel acceleration methods which use the hardware features not available to shader implementations.

The North Mountain of the Annapolis Valley, NS, in eastern Canada, is a ~200 km basalt ridge drained by many small first or second order streams in independent catchments. The area is fairly uniform geologically, presenting an opportunity to compare streams of similar chemistry, slope and aspect, that vary in other respects, such as invertebrate community structure. In this thesis, I examine two macroinvertebrate functional groups to determine key factors influencing their abundance, composition and diversity across catchments. Chapters 2 and 3 are concerned with the predatory invertebrate guild in eight of the streams, in two groups separated by ~65 km. In Chapter 2, I assessed factors influencing composition of the predator guild using similarity matrices. Similarity in predator composition declined with distance, and streams that were more similar in disturbance (spates) were more similar in predator composition. Similarity within one family, Rhyacophilidae, was related to similarity in fish population. Chapter 3 reports the results of laboratory experiments involving two widespread species. Field data suggested an asymmetric interaction between Sweltsa onkos (Plecoptera: Chloroperlidae) and Rhyacophila vibox (Trichoptera: Rhyacophilidae); behavioural observations in artificial streams supported this. In the presence of R. vibox, S. onkos had higher mortality and injury rates, and grew less. The results of these chapters suggest that, although disturbance is important in shaping community structure, the results of interspecific interactions can be detected at large scales. S. onkos can only attain high numbers in streams where fish predation reduces the abundance of R. vibox. Chapter 4 examines biodiversity patterns in the macroinvertebrate detritivore guild in 25 streams encompassing ~80 km of the ridge. Using density and richness of the detritivore community, detrital resource quantity, and top predator abundance, I looked for evidence in support of several mechanisms that can lead to positive species-energy relationships. Patterns conformed to expectations of the More Individuals Hypothesis. It appears that taxonomic richness of the detritivore guild increases with detrital resource availability because more taxa can attain their minimum viable population size where more resources are available.

Detta examensarbete går ut på att för TitanX Engine Cooling ABs räkning analysera deras användning av Lean-verktyget Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Detta på grund av att verktyget inte levererar all information som företaget efterfrågar. För att hitta potentiella alternativ till VSM har verktyg och ramverk inom Enterprise Architecture studerats (EA). Utöver detta har även Theory of Constraints och Sex Sigma analyserats. För att undersöka om det är möjligt att även skapa en kostnadsdimension i VSM har påläggskalkylering undersökts. Resultatet av jämförelsen av teorin bakom VSM och hur TitanX använder VSM visar att det finns vissa skillnader, dock är skillnaderna inte så stora och tros inte påverka resultatet av själva kartläggningen. Vidare har analysen givit att EA kan ersätta VSM men också att modellerna och ramverken inom EA är avsevärt mer komplexa och omfattande än VSM. Theory of constraints är integrerbart med Lean och innehåller också en serie mätvärden som ger den information som TitanX efterfrågar.

Ice stream research has gained momentum in the last decade due to the increased need to understand ice sheet dynamics and instability and, by extension, the role ice streams have on climate change and sea level rise. Although significant progress has been made recently in understanding the role of ice streams in ice sheet dynamics, much remains to be done for documenting and understanding paleo-ice stream records. This is especially true for terrestrial paleo-ice streams like those that operated in the southwest Laurentide Ice Sheet. In previous studies evidence was shown for at least two large paleo-ice stream systems in southern Saskatchewan and a model was proposed involving major glacial dynamics shifts during the Late Wisconsinan linked to ice streaming in the Prairies. The goal of this research is to further characterize drift provenance and to verify sediment-landform assemblages that are central to the proposed reconstruction. This is done through spatial analysis of sediment and landform characteristics (e.g. compositional data, till fabric, landform identification). Provenance is also investigated using radiometric data and 40Ar/39Ar dating of hornblende grains. All of the data are geo-referenced in GIS to examine the spatial relationships. Results show spatially consistent patterns that fit within the structure of the proposed ice stream model. Ten assemblages were delineated, some showing landform evidence of southwestern and southeastern flow, while others show an older western signature through compositional data. The ice flow dynamics were characterized by a combination of landform evidence and compositional data, where three distinct ice flow phases can be seen. Of these three flow phases, two can be characterized by paleo-ice streams. The older south westward Maskwa system flowed against the regional slope, creating a large area of mega-scale glacial lineations, as well as transverse ridges, and was bound on either side by hummocky terrain. The preservation of the southwest Maskwa system was due to the abrupt shift to the southeastward Buffalo system. The Buffalo system captured the subglacial water from the Maskwa causing its shutdown, which fed the James Lobe until it collapsed. The Buffalo paleo-ice stream was the youngest and least stable of the two systems, as shown in the cross-cutting landform evidence. This approach combines multiple methods of analysis to go beyond the geomorphologic evidence to test the main underlying assumptions of paleo-ice stream landsystem models. This is critical if we are to understand the processes involved in the formation of paleo-ice streams and to reconstruct their evolution. Further characterization of the paleo-ice stream systems in the Prairies is critical to improve our understanding of how large ice sheets, like the Laurentide Ice Sheet, evolved and eventually collapsed.

Portable stream programming language (PSPL) is a language for baseband application programming on reconfigurable architectures. The first step in its development has been completed. A parser has been provided for the front end of the PSPL compiler. The syntax of the language has been fixed to allow for easy parses. The scanner and the parser where generated using automatic tools (scanner and parser generators) which rely on complex mathematical algorithms for their generation. Abstract syntax (data structures that preserve the source program so that program structure is evident) was implemented for the parser using a syntax separate from interpretation style of programming. Tests were carried out to ensure that the correct data structures were generated. The final outcome is a parser that other phases of the compiler can depend on for onward transmission of the source program in an unambiguous manner. The development of subsequent phases of the compiler will form the next logical step in the processes of transforming PSPL to a stand alone language.