Meeting deadlines is an important aspect of every employee’s role within an organization because the ability to meet deadlines is one of the key performance areas that employees are measured against during their performance reviews. This study will focus on those factors that contribute to employees meeting or missing their business deadlines. The factors discussed in this study are employee loyalty, job satisfaction, employee satisfaction and confidence. South Africa is a controlled-time culture, and adherence to schedules is important and expected. In South Africa, missing a deadline is a sign of inefficiency and poor management and can have an impact on people’s confidence. Successful management will depend on the ability of individuals in the team, being able to meet deadlines. In this study, the target population consisted of fifty employees, in various positions, based in the city of Durban. The questionnaires were distributed via email and some were self-administered. The quantitative method was used to gather and analyse the data. The findings of this study reveal that employee satisfaction, job satisfaction, employee loyalty and confidence all contribute towards employees meeting business deadlines. Robbins (2009) states that numerous studies have shown that satisfied employees are highly motivated, have high morale at work and work more effectively and efficiently. These employees are also more committed to continuous improvement and to quality. The recommendation will be that managers or employers must schedule dates by which specific tasks or projects must be completed and they should keep to the schedule to avoid procrastination. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

Die vorliegende Arbeit erörtert Ansätze für „Zeitmaschinen“, die in Einklang mit der modernen Physik stehen. Besprochen werden u. a. die Tachyonen-Hypothese, Tiplers rotierender Zylinder, der Gödel-Kosmos, der Anti-de-Sitter-Kosmos und die sogenannten „Wurmlöcher“. Zugleich sollen Ansätze vorgestellt werden (z. B. Eternalismus, Viele-Welten-Modell, Prinzip der konsistenten Geschichte), die Lösungsversuche für die Paradoxien von Vergangenheitsreisen bieten. Obwohl erstaunlicherweise die fundamentalen Gesetze der Physik (abgesehen von extrem seltenen und makroskopisch nicht in Erscheinung tretenden quantenmechanischen Effekten) bei einer Zeitumkehr nicht verletzt sind, scheint es in der Natur doch ein grundsätzliches Verbot von Vergangenheitsreisen zu geben. Der Physiker Dieter Zeh, dessen Position im Schlusskapitel der Arbeit näher beleuchtet wird, vertritt die Auffassung, dass die Science-Fiction-Literatur zum Thema „Zeitreisen“ überwiegend auf einfachen begrifflichen Fehlern beruhe. Die in Anlehnung an die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie konstruierten Vorgänge seien bestenfalls genauso „theoretisch möglich“ wie ein Gas, das sich von selbst in einer Ecke des Gefäßes versammelt. Um die Reisen in die Vergangenheit scheint es zu stehen wie mit einer Anfrage an Radio Jerewan; die Antwort lautet stets: „Im Prinzip ja, aber …“ Doch die Faszination dieser Idee wird weiterhin Stoff für die „Fiction“ liefern.

Die vorliegende Arbeit erörtert Ansätze für „Zeitmaschinen“, die in Einklang mit der modernen Physik stehen. Besprochen werden u. a. die Tachyonen-Hypothese, Tiplers rotierender Zylinder, der Gödel-Kosmos, der Anti-de-Sitter-Kosmos und die sogenannten „Wurmlöcher“. Zugleich sollen Ansätze vorgestellt werden (z. B. Eternalismus, Viele-Welten-Modell, Prinzip der konsistenten Geschichte), die Lösungsversuche für die Paradoxien von Vergangenheitsreisen bieten. Obwohl erstaunlicherweise die fundamentalen Gesetze der Physik (abgesehen von extrem seltenen und makroskopisch nicht in Erscheinung tretenden quantenmechanischen Effekten) bei einer Zeitumkehr nicht verletzt sind, scheint es in der Natur doch ein grundsätzliches Verbot von Vergangenheitsreisen zu geben. Der Physiker Dieter Zeh, dessen Position im Schlusskapitel der Arbeit näher beleuchtet wird, vertritt die Auffassung, dass die Science-Fiction-Literatur zum Thema „Zeitreisen“ überwiegend auf einfachen begrifflichen Fehlern beruhe. Die in Anlehnung an die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie konstruierten Vorgänge seien bestenfalls genauso „theoretisch möglich“ wie ein Gas, das sich von selbst in einer Ecke des Gefäßes versammelt. Um die Reisen in die Vergangenheit scheint es zu stehen wie mit einer Anfrage an Radio Jerewan; die Antwort lautet stets: „Im Prinzip ja, aber …“ Doch die Faszination dieser Idee wird weiterhin Stoff für die „Fiction“ liefern.

[Truncated abstract] The accelerating pace of convergence of communications from disparate application types onto common packet networks has made quality of service an increasingly important and problematic issue. Applications of different classes have diverse service requirements at distinct levels of importance. Also, these applications offer traffic to the network with widely variant characteristics. Yet a common network is expected at all times to meet the individual communication requirements of each flow from all of these application types. One group of applications that has particularly critical service requirements is the class of real-time applications, such as packet telephony. They require both the reproduction of a specified timing sequence at the destination, and nearly instantaneous interaction between the users at the endpoints. The associated delay limits (in terms of upper bound and variation) must be consistently met; at every point where these are violated, the network transfer becomes worthless, as the data cannot be used at all. In contrast, other types of applications may suffer appreciable deterioration in quality of service as a result of slower transfer, but the goal of the transfer can still largely be met. The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the potential effectiveness of a class of packet scheduling algorithms in meeting the specific service requirements of real-time applications in a converged network environment. Since the proposal of Weighted Fair Queueing, there have been several schedulers suggested to be capable of meeting the divergent service requirements of both real-time and other data applications. ... This simulation study also sheds light on false assumptions that can be made about the isolation produced by start-time and finish-time schedulers based on the deterministic bounds obtained. The key contributions of this work are as follows. We clearly show how the definition of the virtual time function affects both delay bounds and delay distributions for a real-time flow in a converged network, and how optimality is achieved. Despite apparent indications to the contrary from delay bounds, the simulation analysis demonstrates that start-time rate-based schedulers possess useful characteristics for real-time flows that the traditional finish-time schedulers do not. Finally, it is shown that all the virtual time rate-based schedulers considered can produce isolation problems over multiple hops in networks with high loading. It becomes apparent that the benchmark First-Come-First-Served scheduler, with spacing and call admission control at the network ingresses, is a preferred arrangement for real-time flows (although lower priority levels would also need to be implemented for dealing with other data flows).

Univ., Diss.--Mainz, 1997.

The diploma thesis deals with the leisure time of children at second stage of elementary school. It identifies differences in leisure time of children living in the city and in the countryside. In the theoretical part the leisure time is processed, functions of leisure time and function of education in the leisure time. Further there are defined leisure time interest activities, there is explained the organization and disorganization of leisure time. There are also described places where children can spend their leisure time. In the thesis there is briefly described the physical and mental development of the child´s older school age. For the practical part it was chosen the questionnaire method. There are set goals and assumptions of the research. The investigation was attended by pupils from three schools, one school of urban and two rural schools in the district of Sušice. The identified differences in leisure time of children in the city and in the countryside are summarized in the conclusion of the thesis.

Time series are ubiquitous in the day-by-day of human beings. A diversity of application domains generate data arranged in time, such as medicine, biology, economics, and signal processing. Due to the great interest in time series, a large variety of methods for mining temporal data has been proposed in recent decades. Several of these methods have one characteristic in common: in their cores, there is a (dis)similarity function used to compare the time series. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is arguably the most relevant, studied and applied distance measure for time series analysis. The main drawback of DTW is its computational complexity. At the same time, there are a significant number of data mining tasks, such as motif discovery, which requires a quadratic number of distance computations. These tasks are time intensive even for less expensive distance measures, like the Euclidean Distance. This thesis focus on developing fast algorithms that allow large-scale analysis of temporal data, using similarity-based methods for time series data mining. The contributions of this work have implications in several data mining tasks, such as classification, clustering and motif discovery. Specifically, the main contributions of this thesis are the following: (i) an algorithm to speed up the exact DTW calculation and its embedding into the similarity search procedure; (ii) a novel DTW-based spurious prefix and suffix invariant distance; (iii) a music similarity representation with implications on several music mining tasks, and a fast algorithm to compute it, and; (iv) an efficient and anytime method to find motifs and discords under the proposed prefix and suffix invariant DTW. / Séries temporais são ubíquas no dia-a-dia do ser humano. Dados organizados no tempo são gerados em uma infinidade de domínios de aplicação, como medicina, biologia, economia e processamento de sinais. Devido ao grande interesse nesse tipo de dados, diversos métodos de mineração de dados temporais foram propostos nas últimas décadas. Muitos desses métodos possuem uma característica em comum: em seu núcleo, há uma função de (dis)similaridade utilizada para comparar as séries. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) é indiscutivelmente a medida de distância mais relevante na análise de séries temporais. A principal dificuldade em se utilizar a DTW é seu alto custo computacional. Ao mesmo tempo, algumas tarefas de mineração de séries temporais, como descoberta de motifs, requerem um alto número de cálculos de distância. Essas tarefas despendem um grande tempo de execução, mesmo utilizando-se medidas de distância menos custosas, como a distância Euclidiana. Esta tese se concentra no desenvolvimento de algoritmos eficientes que permitem a análise de dados temporais em larga escala, utilizando métodos baseados em similaridade. As contribuições desta tese têm implicações em variadas tarefas de mineração de dados, como classificação, agrupamento e descoberta de padrões frequentes. Especificamente, as principais contribuições desta tese são: (i) um algoritmo para acelerar o cálculo exato da distância DTW e sua incorporação ao processo de busca por similaridade; (ii) um novo algoritmo baseado em DTW para prover invariância a prefixos e sufixos espúrios no cálculo da distância; (iii) uma representação de similaridade musical com implicações em diferentes tarefas de mineração de dados musicais e um algoritmo eficiente para computá-la; (iv) um método eficiente e anytime para encontrar motifs e discords baseado na medida DTW invariante a prefixos e sufixos.

This thesis describes a further development of a building block for programmable devices in embedded systems handling real-time functionality. Embedded systems are included in a variety of products within different technical areas such as industrial automation, consumer electronics, automotive industry, and communication-, and multimedia systems. Products ranging from trains and airplanes to microwave ovens and washing machines are controlled by embedded systems. Programmable devices constitute a part of these embedded systems. Today, a programmable device can include a complete system containing building blocks connected with each other via programs written using a hardware description language. The programmable devices can be programmed and changed over and over again and this flexibility makes it possible to explore how these building blocks can best be designed in relation to system requirements, before final implementation. This thesis describes a further development of a building block for programmable devices implemented in a non-traditional way, i.e., the implementation is written using both hardware description language and traditional software languages. This new building block handles real-time functionality in a non-traditional way that enables certain benefits, such as increased performance, predictability and less memory consumption. Using a non-traditional implementation also has its drawbacks, and e.g., extensions and adjustments can be hard to handle since modifications are required in both hardware and software programming languages. The new building block was investigated in order to see how it could be facilitated when used for real-time functionality. The configurability of the block was extended which enables further customization of the building block. This leads to the possibility to use the block within a wider spectrumof applications. It is also possible to reduce the size and cost of the final product since resource usage can be optimized. Furthermore, a mathematicalmodel estimating resource usage for real-time functionality has been developed. The model enables distinctive trade-offs comparisons, and guidance for system designers, when considering what type of real-time operating system to use in a certain design.

The present work introduces a methodology to obtain a discrete time state space representation of an electrical network using the nodal [G] matrix of the Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) solution. This is the first time the connection between the EMTP nodal analysis solution and a corresponding state-space formulation is presented. Compared to conventional state space solutions, the nodal EMTP solution is computationally much more efficient. Compared to the phasor solutions used in transient stability analysis, the proposed approach captures a much wider range of eigenvalues and system operating states. A fundamental advantage of extracting the system eigenvalues directly from the EMTP solution is the ability of the EMTP to follow the characteristics of nonlinearities. The system's trajectory can be accurately traced and the calculated eigenvalues and eigenvectors correctly represent the system's instantaneous dynamics. In addition, the algorithm can be used as a tool to identify network partitioning subsystems suitable for real-time hybrid power system simulator environments, including the implementation of multi-time scale solutions. The proposed technique can be implemented as an extension to any EMTP-based simulator. Within our UBC research group, it is aimed at extending the capabilities of our real-time PC-cluster Object Virtual Network Integrator (OVNI) simulator. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

Embedded systems are commonplace, often with real-time requirements, limited resources and increasingly complex workloads with high demands on security and reliability. The complexity of these systems calls for extensive developer experience and many tools has been created to aid in the development of the software running on such devices. One of these tools, the Real-Time For the Masses (RTFM) concurrency framework developed at Luleå University of Technology (LTU), is built upon a pre-existing, well established and theoretically underpinned execution model providing deadlock free execution and strong guarantees about correctness. The framework is further enhanced by the memory safety provided by Rust, a modern systems programming language. This thesis documents the work done towards improving the framework by studying the possibility to make it extendable. For this, a model of the present layout is required, which in turn requires a solid understanding of Rust's way to structure code. To realise such a large structural change it was advisable to join the open-source RTFM community as a core developer. This role included new responsibilities and required work within different areas of the framework, not only directly related to the primary goal. It also provided the insight that in order to reach the desired extendable structure, many other improvements had to be done first, including the removal of large experimental features. To aid the development, usage of state of the art Continuous Integration testing (CI) were key. Changes to such systems are also part of the development process. The name of the project changed in the middle of this thesis work, going from RTFM to Real-Time Interrupt-driven Concurrency (RTIC). The implemented features and usability fixes detailed in this thesis improves the user experience for embedded system developers resulting in increased productivity while making the development process of such systems more accessible. These general improvements will be part of the next release of the framework. A version v0.6.0-alpha.0 of the framework has been released for testing. The experiences gained related to open-source project governance during this work are also presented.