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Comments and Discussions : Emiko USUI (臼井恵美子)

With the rapid growth in consumer electronics, people expect thin, smart and powerful devices, e.g. Google Glass and other wearable devices. However, as portable electronic products become smaller, energy consumption becomes an issue that limits the development of portable systems due to battery lifetime. In general, simply reducing device size cannot fully address the energy issue. To tackle this problem, we propose an on-chip interconnect infrastructure and pro- gram storage structure for a coarse-grained reconfigurable architecture (CGRA) with emerging non-volatile embedded memory (MRAM). The interconnect is composed of a matrix of time-multiplexed switchboxes which can be dynamically reconfigured with the goal of energy reduction. The number of processors performing computation can also be adapted. The use of MRAM provides access to high-density storage and lower memory energy consumption versus more standard SRAM technologies. The combination of CGRA, MRAM, and flexible on-chip interconnection is considered for signal processing. This application domain is of interest based on its time-varying computing demands. To evaluate CGRA architectural features, prototype architectures have been pro- totyped in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Measurements of energy, power, instruction count, and execution time performance are considered for a scalable num- ber of processors. Applications such as adaptive Viterbi decoding and Reed Solomon coding are used for evaluation. To complete this thesis, a time-scheduled switchbox was integrated into our CGRA model. This model was prototyped on an FPGA. It is shown that energy consumption can be reduced by about 30% if dynamic design reconfiguration is performed.

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In this thesis, I explored the relationship between patient experience of wait time for consultation and scheduled surgery, type of illness (orthopaedic or cardiac), and descriptions of time using qualitative methodology. Thirty two patients awaiting orthopaedic or cardiac surgery were recruited by surgeons in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan during the period of September 2009 to November 2010. Those patients awaiting orthopaedic surgery were interviewed when the decision to treat was made and again at the midpoint of their waiting period. Cardiac surgery patients were interviewed after their angiography and consent to surgery, and again the day prior to surgery. Patients were asked about their perceptions of time while waiting, maximum acceptable wait time for consultation and surgery, and the effects of waiting. Interpretative phenomenology (1) was the method and data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.Participant suffering, the meaningfulness given to the experience, and the agency participants felt they had over the waiting period determined the lived duration of time experience. Participants considered pain, mobility restriction, disease progression and lethality of condition to be the primary determinants of wait time maximums. Waiting effects included restriction, uncertainty, resignation, coping with waiting, and opportunity. Few subtle differences between groups emerged indicating other variables may be more relevant to the quality of waiting experience. Participant suggestions for improving experience consisted of managing patient conditions and navigating the system. The findings suggest uncertainty in illness impacts the quality of wait time experience. The study denotes the experience of waiting for scheduled surgery is complex and not necessarily a linear relationship between greater symptom severity and less tolerance for wait time.

Stability is a critical issue in gain-scheduled control problems in that the closed loop system may not be stable during the transitions between operating conditions despite guarantees that the gain-scheduled controller stabilizes the plant model at fixed values of the scheduling variable. For Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) model representations, a controller interpolation method using Youla parameterization that guarantees stability despite fast transitions in scheduling variables is proposed. By interconnecting an LPV plant model with a Local Controller Network (LCN), the proposed Youla parameterization based controller interpolation method allows the interpolation of controllers of different size and structure, and guarantees stability at fixed points over the entire operating region. Moreover, quadratic stability despite fast scheduling is also guaranteed by construction of a common Lyapunov function, while the characteristics of individual controllers designed a priori at fixed operating condition are recovered at the design points. The efficacy of the proposed approach is verified with both an illustrative simulation case study on variation of a classical MIMO control problem and an experimental implementation on a multi-evaporator vapor compression cycle system. The dynamics of vapor compression systems are highly nonlinear, thus the gain-scheduled control is the potential to achieve the desired stability and performance of the system. The proposed controller interpolation/switching method guarantees the nonlinear stability of the closed loop system during the arbitrarily fast transition and achieves the desired performance to subsequently improve thermal efficiency of the vapor compression system.

The graduation theses at the theme ,, The optimalisation of seting land machanisation at maintenance of melioration objects (waterwork) is described using methods of scheduled maintenance of melioration objects and setting the land mechanisation at this operations with their tools. The next part of graduation theses is discribed the choose of optimal alternace (variation) resolution manner of maintenance complience with legislature and promulgation 225/2002 Sb. The general references at recultivation water reservoir (pond) is set out with practical pictures on pond Beranov near by village Čakov.

Learning in America has been restrained by time. Educators have developed a time-bound mentality and deceived themselves into believing that schools can educate all students at the same pace. Across the nation there is a growing trend toward restructuring as educators seek smaller class enrollment with more flexible use of time. Block scheduling utilizes classes organized into longer blocks of time and may be an element that meets these demands for restructuring. In Virginia, 4/4 block scheduling is the most popular (31.6%) arrangement of the school day. Advocates of 4/4 block scheduling are convinced this schedule meets students' needs. With the adoption of the new Standards of Learning Tests for Virginia Public Schools it is important for educators to determine which schedule will help students improve their test scores. There are no empirical studies on the effect of 4/4 block scheduling on these Standards of Learning Tests. This study will attempt to determine if there is a meaningful relationship between two types of schedules, the 4/4 block and 7-period traditional schedules, and student achievement on the Standards of Learning Tests for Virginia Public Schools. / Ed. D.

This project is part of a collaborative MSc training programme between the Aviation Industries of China (AVIC) and Cranfield University, aiming at enhancing the competitiveness of AVIC in both international and domestic aviation market through applying continuing airworthiness policies in the whole aircraft development process. The arrangement of the research project is that all students start with a Group Design Project which is based on the Flying Crane Project provided by AVIC. Individual research projects will address some aspects of the Flying Crane Project during the Group Design Project, and then further developed during the period for individual projects. The aim of this research is to apply the airworthiness requirements and the methodology of the Maintenance Steering Group logic (MSG-3) in the Flying Crane Project. This is because that maintenance is one of the key factors of Continuing Airworthiness, and MSG-3 logic is the most accepted and approved method to develop scheduled maintenance for civil aircrafts. The main objectives of this project include: (1) To investigate current Continuing Airworthiness regulations, including European airworthiness requirements (as the main regulation to comply with) and Chinese airworthiness regulations (as an important reference and supplement to the research); (2) To investigate the main analysis methodology of reliability and maintainability, including Damage Tolerance and Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA); (3) To analyse the data resulted from the Group Design Project using MSG-3 logic to produce a set of Continuing Airworthiness instructions, for the operator and maintenance organisation of the aircraft, from the design organization’s perspective; (4) To develop Continuing Airworthiness instructions for airline operators to compose maintenance programmes for Flying Crane aircrafts, including maintenance tasks and intervals for the selected airframe systems and structural components; and (5) To identify applicable maintenance organisations in China for Flying Crane aircrafts in accordance with both European and Chinese airworthiness requirements. On completion of this research, two aspects of Continuing Airworthiness have been investigated, including maintenance programme and maintenance organization. With MSG-3 logic, the author developed the maintenance plan for three structural components (fuselage skin panel, wing root joint, and fin-fuselage attachment) and one airframe system (fuel system) based on results from the Group Design Project. The author also investigated the Chinese domestic aircraft maintenance companies, and selected suitable maintenance organizations based on technical and economical criteria.