La notion de micro-systèmes est née avec la microélectronique, mais n'a jamais connu le même essor. Les raisons de cette différence de développement sont nombreuses : multiplicité des domaines à maîtriser, complexité des circuits de traitement du signal nécessaires, et surtout manque de procédés de fabrication standards. Jusqu'à nos jours, pour presque chaque circuit micro-système conçu puis réalisé, un procédé de fabrication spécifique a dû être développé en Laboratoire. En outre, en raison du manque de marché apparent pour ce type de composant, rares sont les applications qui ont pu être industrialisées, les investissements nécessaires étant trop importants. Les micro-systèmes sont donc, depuis leur naissance, restés des sujets de recherche en laboratoire, et n'ont pu connaître de phase d'industrialisation. Le but de mon travail de recherche a été l'utilisation des capacités et des compétences offertes par l'industrie de la microélectronique (technologie de fabrication, outils et méthodes de conception, de simulation et de test), pour concevoir et réaliser des circuits micro-systèmes monolithiques, grâce au procédé de gravure anisotropique du silicium cristallin, il est possible d'obtenir des éléments suspendus sur des micro-cavités à partir de puces fabriquées avec des technologies VLSI. Ces éléments peuvent être utilisés pour réaliser des fonctions micro-électroniques. Ce procédé de gravure a été étudié et caractérisé, et des règles de dessin pour la conception et la fabrication de structures suspendues ont été établies. Un environnement de conception assisté par ordinateur, basé sur le logiciel CADENCE, a de plus été développé afin de rendre ce procédé de fabrication accessible à tous les concepteurs.

Cette thèse porte sur l'étude d'architectures de communication sans horloge pour la conception de réseaux de communication asynchrones appliqués aux systèmes globalement asynchrones et localement synchrones. Elle s'intègre également dans le cadre du développement de l'outil de conception automatique de circuits asynchrones TAST (TIMA Asynchronous Synthesis Tool).<br />L'importance des besoins de communication au sein des systèmes intégrés modernes fait du réseau d'interconnexion un acteur majeur de la complexité et des performances de ces systèmes. Parmi les nombreuses méthodologies existantes adressant le problème de synchronisation au sein des systèmes sur silicium, nous montrons l'intérêt de choisir un réseau d'interconnexion sans horloge pour la communication des systèmes globalement asynchrones et localement synchrones. <br />Nous développons dans ce manuscrit une méthodologie de conception d'un réseau d'interconnexion qui utilise les propriétés d'excellente modularité des circuits sans horloge. Nous découpons la construction de nos réseaux sur silicium asynchrones en quatre modules majeurs : arbitrage, transport, routage et synchronisation. L'objectif de ce découpage simple est de permettre à terme la synthèse automatique d'arbitres et de réseaux de communication sans horloge dans l'outil de conception TAST. Les modules du réseau sont spécifiés en CHP, un langage de modélisation de haut niveau adapté à la description et à la synthèse de circuits asynchrones. A travers ces modélisations, nous mettons en relief l'importance des problèmes d'arbitrage et de synchronisation entre les blocs du système. Nous présentons un système de communication qui illustre cette méthodologie de construction de réseau par assemblage de modules et son degré d'automatisation actuel.

<p>Future radars require more flexible and faster radar signal processing chain than commercial radars of today. This means that the demands on the processors in a radar signal system, and the desire to be able to compute larger amount of data in lesser time, is constantly increasing. This thesis focuses on commercial micro-processors of today that can be used for Active Electronically Scanned Array Antenna (AESA) based radar, their physical size, power consumption and performance must to be taken into consideration. The evaluation is based on theoretical comparisons among some of the latest processors provided by PACT, PicoChip, Intrinsity, Clearspeed and IBM. The project also includes a benchmark made on PowerPC G5 from IBM, which shows the calculation time for different Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs). The benchmark on the PowerPC G5 shows that it is up to 5 times faster than its predecessor PowerPC G4 when it comes to calculate FFTs, but it only consumes twice the power. This is due to the fact that PowerPC G5 has a double word length and almost twice the frequency. Even if this seems as a good result, all the PowerPC´s that are needed to reach the performance for an AESA radar chain would consume too much power. The thesis ends up with a discussion about the traditional architectures and the new multi-core architectures. The future belongs with almost certainty to some kind of multicore processor concept, because of its higher performance per watt. But the traditional single core processor is probably the best choice for more moderate-performance systems of today, if you as developer looking for a traditional way of programing processors.</p>

Youth unemployment has been a persistent problem in the European Union for many years and the affected countries spend a substantial part of their budget on active labour market policies, with the aim to integrate young unemployed workers into the labour market. Employment subsidy programmes are one type of active labour market policies that have been implemented. Although important amounts of money have been spent for these programmes, little is known about the effects of participation in subsidised employment on the labour market transitions. This thesis incorporates several studies that aim to estimate the effect of a subsidised employment programme. The programme provides a reduction of the social insurance contribution for employers that hire eligible workers. All three studies provide estimates for the participation of long term unemployed school leavers. In order to evaluate whether programme participation is useful for their integration into the labour market, the effect on different duration outcomes has been investigated. A major difficulty in causal analysis with non-experimental data is that the characteristics of the group of participants may by systematically different from those of the group of non-participants. Estimates may therefore reflect both the effect of participation as well as the particular selection of participants. To control for this selection bias, multivariate mixed proportional hazard models have been applied and a large number of control variables have been incorporated. The results of this thesis show that participation in the employment subsidy programme accelerates the transitions into regular, non-subsidised employment. Moreover, the employment duration is increased, compared to a regular employment spell. Finally, the estimates show that the effect of a former participation on the duration of a subsequent unemployment spell is similar to the effect of a former regular employment spell.

Introduction: Each year thousands of micro firms are established in Sweden, not all firms will survive and grow; instead many will be forced out of business. Possible explanations of this phenomena could lie in the personality of the entrepreneur, the network of the micro firm as well as support from society and so on. Problem: Prior research has showed that networks and networking are important for the establishment, development and growth of micro firms. The majority of prior research has been of a quantitative nature, which has resulted in great knowledge about structural dimensions while less is known about the interactional dimensions. It is because of the lack of qualitative knowledge that little is known about interactional dimensions in networks and networking activities. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate the role of networks and networking activities for micro firms. Method: The research has the character of a qualitative case study. Data gathering has been done through six in-depth interviews with the founder or manager of six micro firms located in the facilities of Science Park in Jönköping. All information obtained from the interviews were transcribed and then analysed with a model developed by O’Donnell (2004). Summary of analysis: The role of networks and networking activities for micro firms are of great importance for generating business. Our analysis show that many of the micro firms are proactive towards their customers while their relationship with suppliers and competitors varies in characteristics.

In this study, an electrolytic micro-machining tester is employed to investigate the effects of the supply voltage, the immerse depth of tungsten rod, and the machining time on the current waveform, the material removal rate, and the geometry of the tungsten needle. The tungsten rod to be electrolyzed is dipped in an aqueous electrolyte of 10 wt% sodium hydroxide as the anode, and the stainless steel ring as the cathode. The spindle rotating speed and the stirring rotating speed are set to be 100 rpm and 200rpm, respectively. According to analyze the topography of the tungsten needle, four machined regimes have been identified as:¡]1¡^non-machined regime,¡]2¡^incomplete machined regime,¡]3¡^complete machined regime,¡]4¡^over machined regime. In order to obtain the perfect tungsten needle, the experiments are conducted in the complete machined regime. Results show that the tungsten rod becomes a short cone for the immerse depth of 5 mm, and a long cone for the depth of 10mm. When the immerse depth of 10 mm and the supply voltage of 3V, the surface of tungsten needle becomes rough slightly and the tip radius of tungsten needle is about 2£gm. With increasing the supply voltage to 4.5 V, the surface of tungsten needle is uniform with a downward trend in material removal rate, and the tip radius can achieve a submicron. For the supply voltage of 6V, because the material removal rate varies violently, it becomes very difficult to control the diameter of tungsten needle. During the machining time between 0 to 10 min for the supply voltage of 4.5V, the diameter of tungsten rod is decreased from 1000 to 200£gm, but during the machining time between 10 to 12.5 min, the tungsten rod gradually transforms into the needle due to a downward trend in current, and the tip radius is decreased from 200£gm to submicron. Hence, the machining time must be controlled accurately to manufacture the needle in a submicron radius.

This dissertation demonstrates how ACE has successfully equipped thousands of poor Filipinos with the tools necessary for them to raise themselves out of poverty by offering them a culture-specific curriculum that they can implement in their businesses. Furthermore, it will be argued that ACE's culture-specific curriculum could theoretically be applied in Mexico, where the "culture of poverty" exists in abundance.

sonami AG is a company that is located in the Principality of Liechtenstein. It was founded in 2007. Since then it didn’t gain many customers and it is questionable how long the?company will be able to survive with having that few customers. In order to get rid of the current situation and to achieve a sustainable expansion strategy in the long run sonami asked us for help. The question thus is; how would an international expansion strategy look like. In order to answer this question a case study approach was used. Four successful micro companies were interviewed and asked about their international strategy and their recommendations for expanding abroad. In addition internationalization literature has been reviewed. Furthermore the concept of strategy, strategic planning and strategic management has been discussed.In the end a framework for sonami was developed. Different approaches, mixed with different recommendations and insights of the case studies were used to develop it. The result is that sonami has major problems internally, which should be solved before entering any international path. Our developed framework names several pre‐requisites that need to be fulfilled before moving on to the next step. We have tried to generate a deliberate strategy for sonami. We also recommended sonami to take advantage of opportunities given. This would however mean that sonami would then follow an emergent strategy.??

The politics surrounding retrenchment and social protection in the Middle East have been obscured by a broad ideological consensus that civil society has replaced the state as the site of social provisioning since the nineties. Contrary to the dominant “state retreat” narrative, the adoption of neo-liberalism in the region was not in fact uniformly accompanied by convergence around a minimal welfare regime. Why have processes of welfare retrenchment unfolded along contrasting patterns across the Middle East with some states explicitly redefining social policy frameworks, and others undermining access and effects of prevailing programs without dismantling them? The dissertation aims to contribute to our understanding of state-society relations in the region by closely examining recent welfare regime changes in Egypt. Why has Egypt pursued “hidden retrenchment” entailing dilution of universal benefits, conversion of social programs to new beneficiaries and institutional layering, without the explicit overhaul of welfare policy frameworks? What are the micro-level political influences shaping the retrenchment process on the ground? Using the Social Fund for Development as a window for understanding hidden retrenchment in Egypt, the dissertation demonstrates that external dynamics of globalization, and donor assistance do not mainly account for welfare regime restructuring. Similarly, the state’s fiscal status, and the underlying switch in development strategies cannot explain retrenchment patterns. Rather, I argue that the internationally dominant neoliberal development discourse has influenced some aspects of retrenchment reforms, and domestic political dynamics have molded hidden retrenchment in Egypt. The regime’s power maintenance logic and a prevailing moral economy of social entitlements explain the process. Micro-level qualitative and statistical analyses of retrenchment politics also reveal that intra-state agencies struggles, regime security concerns, the state’s tendency to fiscally penalize areas with a history of Muslim Brotherhood support, as well as the National Democratic Party’s patronage networks influence outcomes on the ground. My findings suggest that variations in retrenchment patterns across the region reflect important differences in states’ social bases of power, rather than external pressures or domestic economic dynamics.

Advancements in computational power and micro-imaging has allowed the creation of finite element (FE) models on a microstructural level that can represent complex skeletal structures. These µFE models can analyze the structural integrity of individual trabeculae and may be used to model the impact of complex pathologies on skeletal stability. This thesis aims to: 1) optimize the histological identification of microdamage in healthy and mixed metastatic whole rat vertebrae, 2) quantify trabecular level stress and strain using µFE models and deformable registration generated from µCT data and 3) evaluate stress and strain in µFE models comparing undamaged regions with areas of mechanically induced microdamage. This novel technique allows the histological identification of microdamage in whole vertebrae with accurate alignment to 3D μCT data sets. In the μFE models, significantly higher stresses and strains were found in areas of damaged bone in both healthy and metastatically involved vertebrae.