Syftet med detta arbete var att genom prestandatester undersöka den förbättring i läs- och skrivhastighet samt medelaccesstid som kan uppnås då data placeras på de yttre sektionerna av hårddiskens skivor, jämfört med om data placeras över hela hårddiskskivornas yta. En hårddisk har högre överföringshastighet i den yttersta sektionen av hårddisken och lägre överföringshastighet i den innersta sektionen. Arbetet analyserade den påverkan på prestanda som ovan nämnda dataplacering har på en enskild hårddisk och olika RAID-konfigurationer. Rapporten är intressant då det är lättare att med informationen som presenteras i rapporten, planera hårddiskkonfigurationer som leder till optimerad prestanda. En experimentell metod användes för att utreda prestandaskillnaderna. Prestandatesterna utfördes i programmet HD Tune Pro, vilket har en short stroke-funktion som gör det möjligt att begränsa testerna till endast en del i början av hårddiskens lagringsutrymme. Prestandatesterna utfördes tre gånger vardera för att få ett mer trovärdigt resultat. En märkbar prestandaförbättring blev resultatet av testerna av hårddiskkonfigurationerna då short stroke-funktionen var aktiverad, i jämförelse med då short stroke inte var aktiverat. En praktisk tillämpning av lagring på de yttre sektionerna av hårddiskskivorna, är att skapa en partition som tar upp en del av hårddiskskivornas yttre lagringsyta. Denna tillämpning rekommenderas för personer med hemdatorer som vill uppnå optimerad hårddiskprestanda genom planering av partitionering. Företag som använder RAID-konfigurationer, bör också ha planering av partitionering i åtanke. Ett förslag till vidare behandling av området är att genomföra prestandatester, vars resultat jämförs med prestandavärden för hårddiskar som är konstruerade för hög prestanda.  Nyckelord: hårddisk, partition, prestanda, RAID, sektioner, short stroke

In this thesis, a pass-transistor logic synthesizer is developed for logic mapping of any combinational circuits based on only two types of cells: 2-to-1 multiplexors and inverters. The input contains several sum-of-product Boolean function expressions. Our synthesizer will consider the hardware sharing among these Boolean functions in order to save area. The output of our synthesizer is pass-transistor-based circuits with optimized transistor width in terms of user-specified speed and power performance measurement. During optimization, the Elmore RC delay model is used to estimate the critical path delay and the power is characterized by the switching of all the internal nodes. The final outputs are HSPICE netlists and Verilog gate-level code that allow more detailed timing simulation and automatic placement-routing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-203). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2000. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-174).

A heuristic approach to the application of bandwidth-oriented signal coordination is proposed based on a system partition technique. The proposed approach divides a large signalized arterial into subsystems based on clustering results considering factors such as block distance and turning movements. Each subsystem is optimized to achieve the maximum bandwidth efficiency. Evaluation of the system includes two parts, THOS (through opportunity) comparison and simulation evaluation. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how the proposed approach can be applied, and the influence of clustering method on signal coordination is presented with comparison of three scenarios, no partition, 2 clusters and 3 clusters. Evaluation of the case study shows that clustering method is beneficial in improving progression bandwidth, bandwidth efficiency, bandwidth attainability and THOS. Clustering is good for signal coordination in that either 2 clusters or 3 clusters will result in better performance measures that no partition. However, clustering is not always good for signal coordination in certain conditions. Though bandwidth and bandwidth efficiency of each sub-system can be improved after partition, control delay or number of stops for the corridor might be increased instead for certain conditions of the entire corridor. Whether or not clustering method can be used to partition a signalized system for the purpose of better signal coordination depends on specific traffic and geometric conditions of the corridor. When bandwidth capacity is exceeded by demand, bandwidth optimization should better give way to delay-based optimization strategies.

Advances in analytical chemistry have resulted in a growing body of literature showing measurable concentrations of pharmaceuticals in both drinking and wastewater. Removal of such chemicals is typically inefficient and often poorly characterized. To characterize one such method of removal (micellar enhanced ultrafiltration, (MEUF)), interactions of a cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTABr) surfactant and sulfonamide antibiotics were examined by NMR and semi-equilibrium dialysis (SED). The locus and orientation of binding in a micelle was established for seven sulfonamides by 1H NMR, and it was found that hydrophilic sulfonamides showed weak coordination with the micelle, whereas hydrophobic sulfonamides penetrated into the micellar interior with coordination of the SO2NH group to the charged surface layer. Binding constants were determined by 1H NMR and showed apparent order of magnitude differences between nuclei. Several compounds were unable to be characterized in this manner due to low change in chemical shift with addition of CTABr. SED was performed as an alternative method to determine binding constants. Values determined in this manner were higher than those determined by 1H NMR. Binding constants were converted into changes in Gibbs free energy and used to evaluate and, where necessary, modify the orientation and locus proposed by 1H NMR. Attempts are made to correlate binding constants with octanol-water partition coefficients to determine if a free energy relationship can be derived. Characterization of these systems may allow for a predictive methodology to determine the MEUF removal efficiencies of new sulfonamide and surfactant combinations. It is also hoped that this work may be generalized to predict MEUF efficiency for a wide range of contaminants that might be found in wastewater. / Thesis (Master, Chemistry) -- Queen's University, 2011-01-31 09:46:28.248

The partition of India in August 1947 remains a watershed in the subcontinent’s history, defining the post-independence relationship between the two countries. The event was marked by the greatest migration in the twentieth century and the death of an estimated one million persons. The causes of partition and reasons for the associated violence have been examined previously. However, existing accounts tend to focus in general terms or at best has a provincial angle with respect to patterns of violence, resettlement and rehabilitation. Research in the past has also tended to stop at August 1947 without looking beyond this period. While there has been move towards examining the “lived” experience of partition, there remains a tendency to avoid locality focused case studies. A comparative India-Pakistan dimension is also missing, even in the ‘new history’ of partition. This thesis seeks to adopt a comparative case study approach. In addition to providing new empirical data, it attempts to uncover the differential experiences of violence, migration and the resettlement of partition refugees within the Punjab region. The thesis argues, firstly that localized patterns of political authority and culture impacted on the differential experience of partition related violence; Secondly, that the experience of partition and dislocation was a process rather than an event confined to August 1947. Finally, the thesis considers the extent to which the input of refugee capital and labour were locally significant in the region’s post-partition urban economic development. The thesis adopts a comparative history methodology with the use of three case studies, namely Malerkotla, and Ludhiana in East Pubjab and Faisalabad, formerly Lyallpur in West Pubjab. The themes explored include the differential experience of partition violence through a comparison between the Muslim Princely State of Malerkotla and the neighbouring British administered districts of the Ludhiana district. Some comparative insights into the role of the state and communal violence are also drawn by means of a brief examination of the circumstances in the Sikh ruled Princely state of Patiala. Patterns of urban migration are also explored, shedding new light on the motives behind places of resettlement. Again, a comparative history methodology is used. Finally, the role of refugee capital and labour in post-independence Indian and Pakistan Pubjabs are examined through the study of Ludhiana and Lyallpur. This approach represents the most sustained comparative examination of partition and its aftermath to date based on locality case studies.

For all organisms, segregation and proper intracellular localization of DNA are essential processes in ensuring faithful inheritance of genetic material. In prokaryotes, several different mechanisms have developed for efficiently moving chromosomal DNA to proper cellular locations prior to cell division, and the same holds true for bacterial plasmids. Low-copy-number plasmids and bacterial chromosomes encode active partition systems to ensure their inheritance within a bacterial cell population. One of the well-studied models of partition is that of the P1 plasmid in E. coli. The partition system encoded by the P1 plasmid is known as parABS - ParA is the partition ATPase, ParB is the partition site binding protein and parS is the partition site. The goal of this thesis was to investigate the nucleoprotein complexes essential in the P1 plasmid partition reaction. First, I examined how a single ParB dimer can bind its complicated arrangement of recognition motifs in parS to initiate the partition reaction. I then characterized a novel ParA interaction with the host nucleoid that is critical for proper P1 plasmid dynamics in vivo. Finally, I demonstrate how ParA can act as an adaptor between the nucleoid and the partition complex; effectively allowing the plasmid to use the nucleoid as a track for its intracellular movement and localization. My thesis work provides evidence towards a model that explains the P1 plasmid partition mechanism.

Thresholding is a commonly used technique in image segmentation because of its fast and easy application. For this reason threshold selection is an important issue. There are two general approaches to threshold selection. One approach is based on the histogram of the image while the other is based on the gray scale information located in the local small areas. The histogram of an image contains some statistical data of the grayscale or color ingredients. In this thesis, an adaptive logical thresholding method is proposed for the binarization of blueprint images first. The new method exploits the geometric features of blueprint images. This is implemented by utilizing a robust windows operation, which is based on the assumption that the objects have &quote;C&quote; shape in a small area. We make use of multiple window sizes in the windows operation. This not only reduces computation time but also separates effectively thin lines from wide lines. Our method can automatically determine the threshold of images. Experiments show that our method is effective for blueprint images and achieves good results over a wide range of images. Second, the fuzzy set theory, along with probability partition and maximum entropy theory, is explored to compute the threshold based on the histogram of the image. Fuzzy set theory has been widely used in many fields where the ambiguous phenomena exist since it was proposed by Zadeh in 1965. And many thresholding methods have also been developed by using this theory. The concept we are using here is called fuzzy partition. Fuzzy partition means that a histogram is parted into several groups by some fuzzy sets which represent the fuzzy membership of each group because our method is based on histogram of the image . Probability partition is associated with fuzzy partition. The probability distribution of each group is derived from the fuzzy partition. Entropy which originates from thermodynamic theory is introduced into communications theory as a commonly used criteria to measure the information transmitted through a channel. It is adopted by image processing as a measurement of the information contained in the processed images. Thus it is applied in our method as a criterion for selecting the optimal fuzzy sets which partition the histogram. To find the threshold, the histogram of the image is partitioned by fuzzy sets which satisfy a certain entropy restriction. The search for the best possible fuzzy sets becomes an important issue. There is no efficient method for the searching procedure. Therefore, expansion to multiple level thresholding with fuzzy partition becomes extremely time consuming or even impossible. In this thesis, the relationship between a probability partition (PP) and a fuzzy C-partition (FP) is studied. This relationship and the entropy approach are used to derive a thresholding technique to select the optimal fuzzy C-partition. The measure of the selection quality is the entropy function defined by the PP and FP. A necessary condition of the entropy function arriving at a maximum is derived. Based on this condition, an efficient search procedure for two-level thresholding is derived, which makes the search so efficient that extension to multilevel thresholding becomes possible. A novel fuzzy membership function is proposed in three-level thresholding which produces a better result because a new relationship among the fuzzy membership functions is presented. This new relationship gives more flexibility in the search for the optimal fuzzy sets, although it also increases the complication in the search for the fuzzy sets in multi-level thresholding. This complication is solved by a new method called the &quote;Onion-Peeling&quote; method. Because the relationship between the fuzzy membership functions is so complicated it is impossible to obtain the membership functions all at once. The search procedure is decomposed into several layers of three-level partitions except for the last layer which may be a two-level one. So the big problem is simplified to three-level partitions such that we can obtain the two outmost membership functions without worrying too much about the complicated intersections among the membership functions. The method is further revised for images with a dominant area of background or an object which affects the appearance of the histogram of the image. The histogram is the basis of our method as well as of many other methods. A &quote;bad&quote; shape of the histogram will result in a bad thresholded image. A quadtree scheme is adopted to decompose the image into homogeneous areas and heterogeneous areas. And a multi-resolution thresholding method based on quadtree and fuzzy partition is then devised to deal with these images. Extension of fuzzy partition methods to color images is also examined. An adaptive thresholding method for color images based on fuzzy partition is proposed which can determine the number of thresholding levels automatically. This thesis concludes that the &quote;C&quote; shape assumption and varying sizes of windows for windows operation contribute to a better segmentation of the blueprint images. The efficient search procedure for the optimal fuzzy sets in the fuzzy-2 partition of the histogram of the image accelerates the process so much that it enables the extension of it to multilevel thresholding. In three-level fuzzy partition the new relationship presentation among the three fuzzy membership functions makes more sense than the conventional assumption and, as a result, performs better. A novel method, the &quote;Onion-Peeling&quote; method, is devised for dealing with the complexity at the intersection among the multiple membership functions in the multilevel fuzzy partition. It decomposes the multilevel partition into the fuzzy-3 partitions and the fuzzy-2 partitions by transposing the partition space in the histogram. Thus it is efficient in multilevel thresholding. A multi-resolution method which applies the quadtree scheme to distinguish the heterogeneous areas from the homogeneous areas is designed for the images with large homogeneous areas which usually distorts the histogram of the image. The new histogram based on only the heterogeneous area is adopted for partition and outperforms the old one. While validity checks filter out the fragmented points which are only a small portion of the whole image. Thus it gives good thresholded images for human face images.

Dissertation (Ph. D.)--University of Akron, Dept. of Polymer Science, 2008. / "December, 2008." Title from electronic dissertation title page (viewed 12/29/2008) Advisor, Stephen Z. D. Cheng; Committee members, Alexei Sokolov, Darrell H. Reneker, Gustavo A. Carri, Thein Kyu; Department Chair, Ali Dhinojwala; Dean of the College, Stephen Z. D. Cheng; Dean of the Graduate School, George R. Newkome. Includes bibliographical references.