Networked Control Systems (NCS) are distributed control systems where the sensor signals to the controllers and the control data to the actuators are enclosed in messages and sent over a communication network. On the one hand, the design of an NCS requires ensuring the stability of the control system and achieving system response that is as close as possible to that of an ideal system which demands network resources. On the other hand, these resources are limited and have to be allocated efficiently to accommodate for future system extensions as well as applications other than control purpose. Furthermore the NCS design parameters for the control system messages and the message transmission over the network are interdependent. In this thesis, we propose &ldquo / Integrated NCS Design (INtERCEDE: Integrated NEtwoRked Control systEm DEsign)&rdquo / a novel algorithmic approach for the design of NCS which ensures the stability of the control system, brings system response to that of an ideal system v as close as desired and conserves network bandwidth at the same time. The core of INtERCEDE is a bargaining game approach which iteratively calculates the message parameters and network service parameters. Our experimental results demonstrate the operation of INtERCEDE and how it computes the optimal design parameters for the example NCS.

With the common adoption of the Internet and Web in the recent years, the WOM has been changed to electronic WOM (e- WOM). E-WOM is the positive or negative statements made about a product, company, or media personality that are made widely available via the Internet. It has become an important source of information for the consumer to make decisions including purchase and more and more people have noticed the importance of its applications. The goal of this research is to investigate ¡§message passing along behavior intention¡¨ (MPBI) by using Social Cognitive Theory and Social Capital Theory from the viewpoints of people and environment. We use survey method to collect the data and use PLS to analyze it. And the results reveal that when people passing message along to others, they care about how close these messages are with them instead of how correct these messages are. It implies that MPBI has the nature of daily life, and therefore, people will be more willing to pass daily life messages. Besides, individuals tend to pass along messages to people who have substantial relationship with him/her. We also found people pass message along to people not for reputation but for expressing their affections to others. In addition, message passing Self-efficacy is also important to MPBI. We also classified MPBI into two types ¡X the one is hedonic and the other is utilitarian. The results indicate that people have different behavioral pattern when they deal with different kind of MPBI. In sum, MPBI is a channel for people to maintain the relationship with others and the findings of this study provides some suggestions for the e-WOM research.

Multi-core architectures are becoming more common and core counts continue to increase. There are six- and eight-core chips currently in production, such as Intel Gulftown, and many-core chips with dozens of cores, such as the Intel Teraflops 80-core chip, are projected in the next five years. However, adding more cores often does not improve the performance of applications. It would be desirable to take advantage of the multi-core environment to speed up parallel discrete event simulation. The current bottleneck for many parallel simulations is time synchronization. This is especially true for simulations of wireless networks and on-chip networks, which have low lookahead. Message passing is also a common simulation bottleneck. In order to address the issue of time synchronization, we have designed hardware at a functional level that performs the time synchronization for parallel discrete event simulation asynchronously and in just a few clock cycles, eliminating the need for global communication with message passing or lock contention for shared memory. This hardware, the Global Synchronization Unit, consists of 3 register files, each the size of the number of cores, and is accessed using 5 new atomic instructions. In order to reduce the simulation overhead from message passing, we have also designed two independent pieces of hardware at a functional level, the Atomic Shared Heap and Atomic Message Passing, which can be used to perform lock-free, zero-copy message passing on a multi-core system. The impact of these specialized hardware units on the performance of parallel discrete event simulation is assessed and compared to traditional shared-memory techniques.

No description available.

The purpose of this paper is to supply a summary of library subroutines and functions for parallel MIMD computers. The subroutines have been developed and continously extended at the University of Chemnitz since the end of the eighties. In detail, they are concerned with vector operations, inter-processor communication and simple graphic output to workstations. One of the most valuable features is the machine-independence of the communication subroutines proposed in this paper for a hypercube topology of the parallel processors (excepting a kernel of only two primitive system-dependend operations). They were implemented and tested for different hardware and operating systems including PARIX for transputers and PowerPC, nCube, PVM, MPI. The vector subroutines are optimized by the use of C language and unrolled loops (BLAS1-like). Hardware-optimized BLAS1 routines may be integrated. The paper includes hints for programmers how to use the libraries with both Fortran and C programs.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Haitham Al-Deek. Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-177).

In this thesis, performance of relay-assisted Device-to-device (D2D) communication is investigated where D2D traffic is carried through relay nodes. I develop resource management schemes to maximize end-to-end rate as well as conversing rate requirements for cellular and D2D UEs under total power constraint. I also develop a low-complexity distributed solution using the concept of message passing. Considering the uncertainties in wireless links (e.g., when interference from other relay nodes and the link gains are not exactly known), I extend the formulation using robust resource allocation techniques. In addition, a distributed solution approach using stable matching is developed to allocate radio resources in an efficient and computationally inexpensive way under the bounded channel uncertainties. Numerical results show that, there is a distance threshold beyond which relay-assisted D2D communication significantly improves network performance at the cost of small increase in end-to-end delay when compared to conventional approach.

The aim of this thesis is to study what means are used in newspaper leaders (editorials) to influence public opinion. In order to obtain a wide range of such means, I have chosen material that has a clear timeframe and illustrates strong political antagonism, concerning the 1971 conflict between the Saco and SR unions and the Swedish state. Leaders from eight different newspapers with different party affiliations are analysed – six morning and two evening newspapers. What type of message leaders convey is examined mainly at the sentence level. Writers report what happened, assess the situation and analyse the causes and explanations for there being a labour conflict. They express criticism of those involved in various ways and exhort them to take recommended courses of action to resolve the conflict. Paragraphs can also be categorised in this way. How criticism is expressed is studied in detail because the material is rich in critical utterances of different types.  Various theories about text types and speech act theory provide a theoretical background that is applied to the material. A number of different theories about what defines a genre are presented and tested on the leaders. The results of the investigation indicate that a large number of leaders from the morning newspapers are structured in a similar way, with the paragraph as the unit. They reveal a pattern, the normal pattern, where information is presented in a given order in the majority of morning leaders and the greatest number of message types is used. There is also a pattern of analysis/criticism, with critical and analytical paragraphs alternating and the analysis substantiating the criticism, as a rule. The few leaders in the morning newspapers that do not form a pattern may be strongly critical or almost solely analytical. One of the morning newspapers has many critical leaders that argue or incite. No analysis is made of evening newspaper leaders at the paragraph level since the paragraphs are short; instead, they are analysed as a whole, as are the argumentative leaders. The analysis shows that many leaders are structured in a similar way while at the same time there is considerable variation in the material, which is attributable to there being different types of editorials.

Reality shows that feature people going about their presumed daily lives are not base entertainment. Internet message boards about reality programs are sites where moral work happens. Viewers write about the appearance and actions of show characters and construct moral lessons. Through naturally occurring data produced by fans of these shows, I find that viewers generally express a traditional heteronormative morality around class and gender through stating moral lessons, explaining what is wrong with the characters, or through ridicule and praise.

Adverse relationships between an individual or corporation and its publics can destroy credibility, relationships, marketability, and economic welfare. As such, a genre of discourse is needed to help individuals and organizations respond to charges of wrongdoing. Therefore, the study of image restoration is worthwhile because it provides insight into an important function of our lives. For this thesis study, a content analysis was conducted of media releases and stories produced by the U.S. Air Force regarding a series of sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy in 2002. The purpose of the study is two-fold. First, it determines the image restoration strategies employed by the U.S. Air Force during a crisis situation. Its second -- and primary -- objective is to advance (or reinforce) current image restoration theory by determining whether specific image restoration tactics encourage a positive or negative reporting trend from independent newspapers, and measuring the effectiveness of tactics comprising Benoit's Image Restoration Theory as applied in this particular situation by the U.S. Air Force. Combined, these analyses will demonstrate that Benoit's Image Restoration Theory can be prescriptive rather than simply descriptive (as noted in the review of literature) with the ultimate intent of the study being a determination of how independent media reacts to the image restoration tactics employed by the U.S. Air Force.