Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (M.S.)--California Polytechnic State University, 2009. / Mode of access: Internet. Title from PDF title page; viewed on December 1, 2009. Major professor: Dr. Lily Laiho. "Presented to the faculty of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California." "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering." "June 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30).

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2000. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-67). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ67737.

The primary investigation of this thesis was the relationship between information processing and the internal clock. Clicks trains have previously been found to increase internal clock rate and information processing (Jones, Allely & Wearden, 2010). Chapter 1 examines the existing literature on the internal clock and information processing. Chapter 2 reviews possible mechanisms underlying the effect of clicks and Chapter 3 outlines the research strategy and aims. Chapter 4 investigates the behavioural parallels between internal clock speed and information processing. Chapter 5 explores the parametrics of clicks using a 1, 2 and 4 choice reaction time (RT) task (Experiment 1a, b & c). Overall, RT was reduced on trials preceded by clicks compared to no-clicks and we found that this advantage of clicks can persist for up to 10s. Chapter 6 investigates whether any prestimulus event (in this case white noise) would have the same effect as clicks in tasks of verbal estimation (VE), RT and mental arithmetic (Experiment 2a, b & c). White noise was found to have no effect on either information processing or internal clock speed, which strengthens the idea that the clicks effect is mediated by its influence on the speed of the internal clock. Chapter 7 explores whether processing the clicks as opposed to passively experiencing them would change their effect on a 1, 2 and 4 choice RT and VE task (Experiment 3a & b). Both experiments included two experimental groups (Ask & Don't Ask). In the Ask group, participants had to actively process the clicks by reporting whether there had been a shift in pitch in the clicks. In the Don't Ask they were never asked this. Experiment 3a found longer RTs across all conditions in the Ask group compared to the Don't Ask group suggesting that this processing manipulation had an effect on information processing. Experiment 3b explores the same change to the stimuli in a VE task and found that the click processing manipulation had no detrimental effect on the typical effect produced clicks. Both click types increased verbal estimates of duration in both the Ask and Don't Ask groups. Greater overestimation was found with the clicks compared to the click-change condition. So the processing manipulation had an effect on information processing while leaving the internal clock spared, weakening the idea of a link between the two processes. Frequency and duration of the clicks were manipulated in Experiment 4a and b (Chapter 8) in tasks of RT and VE. Experiment 4a demonstrated no significant effect of frequency on RT. In Experiment 4b, the main findings highlighted the importance click duration not frequency. Experiment 5 (Chapter 9) addresses the question of whether participants have a simultaneous lengthening of subjective duration as well as an increase in information processing by investigating the effect of clicks on memory recall and time estimation of the same stimuli. Overall, clicks enabled participants to correctly recall more letters as well as increasing participants' verbal estimates. Experiment 6 (Chapter 10) used clicks to change the rate of memory decay using a 3, 5 and 8 s delay. Clicks increased the rate of memory decay for the 3 and 5 s delay duration only. In order to explore whether the effect of clicks is due to arousal, Chapter 11 replaced clicks with arousing visual (Experiment 7a) and auditory stimuli (Experiment 7b) in a VE task. There was no relationship between arousal and time estimation. Experiment 8 (Chapter 12) explores whether estimating the duration of emotionally arousing auditory stimuli themselves has an effect on the internal clock. No relationship between arousal and time estimation was evident. Experiment 9 (Chapter 13) explores electrophysiological arousal in a VE task. While there was a behavioural effect of clicks, they did not alter physiological arousal. These findings have major implications for the common notion that arousal mediates the effect of clicks.

This thesis deals with the process of contract management in the company Duo Form Ltd. and it's conceptual departments as well as it's manufacturing process. The aim of this work is to analyze the current situation and to propose a better way of contract management. The proposal consists of two parts. The first part deals with contract processing and the proposal talks about implementation of a new management information system. In the second part, the production process is proposed to purchase a new machinery to replace the existing laser. These two parts intend to use the time and cost more effectively in the contract management side and are hoping to be a great asset for customers and for the company Duo Form itself.

The realm of manufacturing is replete with instances of uncertainties in job processing times, machine statuses (up or down), demand fluctuations, due dates of jobs and job priorities. These uncertainties stem from the inability to gather accurate information about the various parameters (e.g., processing times, product demand) or to gain complete control over the different manufacturing processes that are involved. Hence, it becomes imperative on the part of a production manager to take into account the impact of uncertainty on the performance of the system on hand. This uncertainty, or variability, is of considerable importance in the scheduling of production tasks. A scheduling problem is primarily to allocate the jobs and determine their start times for processing on a single or multiple machines (resources) for the objective of optimizing a performance measure of interest. If the problem parameters of interest e.g., processing times, due dates, release dates are deterministic, the scheduling problem is relatively easier to solve than for the case when the information is uncertain about these parameters. From a practical point of view, the knowledge of these parameters is, most often than not, uncertain and it becomes necessary to develop a stochastic model of the scheduling system in order to analyze its performance. Investigation of the stochastic scheduling literature reveals that the preponderance of the work reported has dealt with optimizing the expected value of the performance measure. By focusing only on the expected value and ignoring the variance of the measure used, the scheduling problem becomes purely deterministic and the significant ramifications of schedule variability are essentially neglected. In many a practical cases, a scheduler would prefer to have a stable schedule with minimum variance than a schedule that has lower expected value and unknown (and possibly high) variance. Hence, it becomes apparent to define schedule efficiencies in terms of both the expectation and variance of the performance measure used. It could be easily perceived that the primary reasons for neglecting variance are the complications arising out of variance considerations and the difficulty of solving the underlying optimization problem. Moreover, research work to develop closed-form expressions or methodologies to determine the variance of the performance measures is very limited in the literature. However, conceivably, such an evaluation or analysis can only help a scheduler in making appropriate decisions in the face of uncertain environment. Additionally, these expressions and methodologies can be incorporated in various scheduling algorithms to determine efficient schedules in terms of both the expectation and variance. In our research work, we develop such analytic expressions and methodologies to determine the expectation and variance of different performance measures of a schedule. The performance measures considered are both completion time and tardiness based measures. The scheduling environments considered in our analysis involve a single machine, parallel machines, flow shops and job shops. The processing times of the jobs are modeled as independent random variables with known probability density functions. With the schedule given a priori, we develop closed-form expressions or devise methodologies to determine the expectation and variance of the performance measures of interest. We also describe in detail the approaches that we used for the various scheduling environments mentioned earlier. The developed expressions and methodologies were programmed in MATLAB R12 and illustrated with a few sample problems. It is our understanding that knowing the variance of the performance measure in addition to its expected value would aid in determining the appropriate schedule to use in practice. A scheduler would be in a better position to base his/her decisions having known the variability of the schedules and, consequently, can strike a balance between the expected value and variance. / Master of Science

O objetivo desta pesquisa foi analisar a operação de praças de arrecadação de pedágio, a fim de fornecer subsídios para o seu projeto e para o estabelecimento de parâmetros e procedimentos para avaliação do nível de serviço. Os dados foram coletados em cinco praças de pedágio do estado de São Paulo, localizadas fora do meio urbano. Os aspectos operacionais estudados foram: o processo de chegadas dos veículos às praças; o perfil da velocidade durante a desaceleração dos veículos na entrada da praça; o processo de escolha da cabine pelos motoristas; o processo de atendimento dos veículos nas cabines (incluindo a forma de pagamento da tarifa); o perfil da velocidade durante a aceleração dos veículos na saída da praça; e as velocidades desenvolvidas nas cabines AVI, que são cabines que atendem somente veículos portadores da tecnologia de cobrança eletrônica de pedágio. As conclusões principais da análise dos dados coletados são: o processo de chegadas dos veículos às praças de pedágio pode ser representado por uma distribuição exponencial negativa (para intervalos curtos); modelos lineares são uma aproximação razoável para a representação do perfil da velocidade durante a desaceleração e a aceleração dos veículos nas praças; a maioria dos motoristas escolhe a cabine no mesmo lado em que chega à praça de pedágio e, uma vez selecionado o lado, se dirige à cabine com menor fila; caminhões e ônibus tendem a usar as cabines do lado direito da praça; alguns motoristas se dirigem a uma cabine com fila mesmo quando há cabines disponíveis para o atendimento naquele lado da praça; e o tempo de atendimento dos veículos nas cabines varia em função do tipo de veículo, da forma de pagamento e das características da praça com relação ao valor da tarifa, fluxo de tráfego e tipo de usuário predominante. Apresenta-se um exemplo de como esses dados podem ser usados para a determinação do nível de serviço das praças, através de um modelo de simulação, que indicou que o uso da cobrança eletrônica de pedágio reduz consideravelmente o congestionamento nas praças de pedágio: com o fluxo de tráfego próximo da capacidade da praça, o tempo médio gasto na praça é reduzido quase à metade se 10% dos usuários optarem pelo pagamento eletrônico da tarifa. / The research objective was to analyze the operation of toll plazas in order to give subsidies for its project as well as to establish parameters and procedures to evaluate the service level. The data were collected in five toll plazas in the state of São Paulo, operated in rural highways. The operational aspects studied were: the vehicle arrival process; the speed profile during deceleration at the toll plaza entrance; the process in which drivers select toll booths; the vehicle processing time at toll booths (including payment method); the speed profile during acceleration at the toll plaza exit; and the speed at AVI toll booths, which process just vehicles equipped with electronic toll collection. The conclusions of the colleted data analysis are: the vehicle arrival process can be represented by a negative exponential distribution (for short time intervals); linear models are an acceptable approach to represent the speed profile during deceleration and acceleration of vehicles at toll plazas; the majority of drivers choose the toll booth in the same side that they arrive the toll plaza and, once the side is chosen, they go to the booth with the shortest queue; trucks and buses frequently go to the right side of the toll plaza; some drivers go to a toll booth with queue despite the availability of free booths at that side of the plaza; and the vehicle processing time at toll booths varies with the vehicle type, the payment method and the plaza characteristics related with the toll value, the traffic volume and the predominant user. An example of how this data can be used to determine the service level of toll plazas is showed by using a simulation model. This model indicated that the use of electronic toll collection reduces considerably congestions at toll plazas: when the traffic flow approaches capacity, the average time spent at the toll plaza is reduced near half if 10% of the users change from manual payment to electronic payment method.

O objetivo desta pesquisa foi analisar a operação de praças de arrecadação de pedágio, a fim de fornecer subsídios para o seu projeto e para o estabelecimento de parâmetros e procedimentos para avaliação do nível de serviço. Os dados foram coletados em cinco praças de pedágio do estado de São Paulo, localizadas fora do meio urbano. Os aspectos operacionais estudados foram: o processo de chegadas dos veículos às praças; o perfil da velocidade durante a desaceleração dos veículos na entrada da praça; o processo de escolha da cabine pelos motoristas; o processo de atendimento dos veículos nas cabines (incluindo a forma de pagamento da tarifa); o perfil da velocidade durante a aceleração dos veículos na saída da praça; e as velocidades desenvolvidas nas cabines AVI, que são cabines que atendem somente veículos portadores da tecnologia de cobrança eletrônica de pedágio. As conclusões principais da análise dos dados coletados são: o processo de chegadas dos veículos às praças de pedágio pode ser representado por uma distribuição exponencial negativa (para intervalos curtos); modelos lineares são uma aproximação razoável para a representação do perfil da velocidade durante a desaceleração e a aceleração dos veículos nas praças; a maioria dos motoristas escolhe a cabine no mesmo lado em que chega à praça de pedágio e, uma vez selecionado o lado, se dirige à cabine com menor fila; caminhões e ônibus tendem a usar as cabines do lado direito da praça; alguns motoristas se dirigem a uma cabine com fila mesmo quando há cabines disponíveis para o atendimento naquele lado da praça; e o tempo de atendimento dos veículos nas cabines varia em função do tipo de veículo, da forma de pagamento e das características da praça com relação ao valor da tarifa, fluxo de tráfego e tipo de usuário predominante. Apresenta-se um exemplo de como esses dados podem ser usados para a determinação do nível de serviço das praças, através de um modelo de simulação, que indicou que o uso da cobrança eletrônica de pedágio reduz consideravelmente o congestionamento nas praças de pedágio: com o fluxo de tráfego próximo da capacidade da praça, o tempo médio gasto na praça é reduzido quase à metade se 10% dos usuários optarem pelo pagamento eletrônico da tarifa. / The research objective was to analyze the operation of toll plazas in order to give subsidies for its project as well as to establish parameters and procedures to evaluate the service level. The data were collected in five toll plazas in the state of São Paulo, operated in rural highways. The operational aspects studied were: the vehicle arrival process; the speed profile during deceleration at the toll plaza entrance; the process in which drivers select toll booths; the vehicle processing time at toll booths (including payment method); the speed profile during acceleration at the toll plaza exit; and the speed at AVI toll booths, which process just vehicles equipped with electronic toll collection. The conclusions of the colleted data analysis are: the vehicle arrival process can be represented by a negative exponential distribution (for short time intervals); linear models are an acceptable approach to represent the speed profile during deceleration and acceleration of vehicles at toll plazas; the majority of drivers choose the toll booth in the same side that they arrive the toll plaza and, once the side is chosen, they go to the booth with the shortest queue; trucks and buses frequently go to the right side of the toll plaza; some drivers go to a toll booth with queue despite the availability of free booths at that side of the plaza; and the vehicle processing time at toll booths varies with the vehicle type, the payment method and the plaza characteristics related with the toll value, the traffic volume and the predominant user. An example of how this data can be used to determine the service level of toll plazas is showed by using a simulation model. This model indicated that the use of electronic toll collection reduces considerably congestions at toll plazas: when the traffic flow approaches capacity, the average time spent at the toll plaza is reduced near half if 10% of the users change from manual payment to electronic payment method.

In this thesis, we consider a rescheduling problem on non-identical parallel machines with controllable processing times. A period of unavailability occurs on one of the machines due to a machine failure, material shortage or broken tool. These disruptions may cause the original schedule to become inecient and sometimes infeasible. In order to generate a new and feasible schedule, we are dealing with two conflicting measures called the eciency and stability measures simultaneously. The eciency measure evaluates the satisfaction of a desired objective function value and the stability measure evaluates the amount of change between the schedule before and after the disruption. In this study, we measure stability by the number of disrupted jobs. In this thesis, the job is referred as a disrupted job if it completes processing after its planned completion time in the original schedule. The eciency is measured by the additional manufacturing cost of jobs. Decreasing number of disrupted jobs requires compressing the processing time of a job which cause an increase in its additional manufacturing cost. For that reason we cannot minimize these objectives at the same time. In order to handle this, we developed a mixed integer programming model for the considered problem by applying the epsilon-constraint approach. This approach makes focusing on the single objective possible to get efficient solutions. Therefore, we studied the problem of minimizing additional manufacturing cost subject to a limit on the number of disrupted jobs. We also considered a convex compression cost function for each job and solved a cost minimization problem by applying conic quadratic reformulation for the model. The convexity of cost functions is a major source of diculty in finding optimal integer solutions in this problem, but applying strengthened conic reformulation has eliminated this diculty. In addition, we prepare an improvement search algorithm in order to find good solution in reasonable CPU times. We use our heuristic procedure on optimality properties we showed for a single machine subproblem. We made computational experiments on small and medium scale test problems. Afterwards, we compare the performance of the improvement search algorithm and mathematical model for their solution quality and durations.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Dellaert, Frank; Committee Co-Chair: Rehg, James; Committee Member: Bobick, Aaron; Committee Member: Essa, Irfan; Committee Member: Smyth, Padhraic. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.