Psychopathy and serial murder are 2 of society's most devastating and least understood tribulations. Even less is comprehended with regards to the differences in the way these ills are expressed between the genders. In this study, psychopathic personality traits are considered in a sample comparison of male and female serial murderers. Traits are measured using questions derived from Hare's Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R, 1991). A content analysis was performed to score the components for each subject, using known and accepted biographical and personal interview materials. Findings showed a distinct difference between the sexes, with females scoring lower than their male counterparts, indicating that factor structure of the PCL-R may need to be restructured in regards to females. Implications for public policy including the way female psychopathy is viewed and diagnosed are reviewed.

Space-based computing applications often demand reliable, high-bandwidth communication systems. FPGAs with Mulit-Gigabit Transceivers (MGTs) provide an effective platform for such systems, but it is important that system designers understand the possible susceptibilities MGTs present to the system. Previous work has provided a foundation for understanding the susceptibility of raw FPGA MGTs but has fallen short of testing MGTs as part of a larger system. This work focuses on answering the questions MGT system designers need to know in order to build a reliable space-based MGT system. Two radiation tests were performed with a test architecture built on the Aurora protocol. These tests were specifically designed to discover system susceptibilities, and effective mechanisms for upset detection, recovery, and recovery detection. Test results reveal that the Aurora protocol serves as an effective basis for simple point-to-point communication for space-based systems but that some additional logic is necessary for high reliability. Particularly, additional upset detection and recovery mechanisms are necessary as well as additional status indicators. These additions are minimal, however, and not all are necessary depending on system requirements. The most susceptible part of the MGT system is the MGT tile components on the RX data path. Upsets to these components most often results in data corruption only and do not affect system operation or disrupt the communication link. Most other upsets which do disrupt normal system operation can be recovered automatically by the Aurora protocol with built-in mechanisms. Only 1% of observed events in testing required additional recovery mechanisms not supplied by Aurora. In addition to test data results, this work also provides suggestions for system designers based on various system requirements and a proposed MGT system design based on the Aurora protocol. The proposed system serves as an example to illustrate how test data can be used to guide the system design and determine system availability. With this knowledge designers are able to build reliable MGT systems for a variety of space-based systems.

This work has extended an existing Aurora protocol for high-speed serial I/O between FPGAs to provide greater fault recovery in the presence of high-energy radiation. To improve on the Aurora protocol, additional resets that affect larger portions of the system were used. Detection for additional error modes that occurred but were not detected by the Aurora protocol was designed. Radiation testing was performed on the Aurora protocol with the additional mitigation hardware. The test gathered large amounts of data on the various error modes of the Aurora protocol and how the additional mitigation circuitry affected the system. The test results showed that the addition of the recovery circuitry greatly enhanced the Aurora protocol's ability to recover from errors. The recovery circuit recovered from all but 0.01% of errors that the Aurora protocol could not. The recovery circuit further increased the availability of the transmission link by proactively applying resets at much shorter intervals than used in previous testing. This quick recovery caused the recovery mechanism to fix some errors that may have recovered automatically with enough time. However, the system still showed an increase in performance, and unrecoverable errors were reduced 100x. The estimated unrecoverable error rate of the system is 5.9E-07 in geosynchronous orbit. The bit error rate of the enhanced system was 8.47754E-015, an order of magnitude improvement.

<p>  </p> <p>Transition to a sustainable power grid entails the use of all net-zero carbon emission technology that is currently available. Liquid metal-cooled fast nuclear reactors (LMFRs) are technologies capable of competitively providing power while attaining sustainability and reliability. Uranium-zirconium metallic alloys have been proposed as LMFRs fuels based on the performance of the fuel in experimental scale reactors, achieving up to 20 at.% burn-up. The following phenomena affects the irradiation performance of U-Zr fuels: constituent redistribution, swelling, fuel-cladding mechanical interaction (FCMI), and fuel-cladding chemical interaction (FCCI). Further understanding of these phenomena, and development of predictive models requires data collection of variables such as composition, morphology of the redistribution regions, porosity distribution, porosity morphology, fission gas release, and the relation between local composition and porosity evolution. </p> <p>To achieve this, focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) serial sectioning was applied to specimens from the different compositional regions developed during constituent redistribution of a U-10 wt.% Zr fuel neutron irradiated to 5.7 at.% burn-up. High-resolution backscattered electron (BSE) micrographs, and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) spectra were obtained for several sections of each specimen. Each section was analyzed to identify the microstructural and compositional evolution in the specimen volume. Three-dimensional porosity and phase volume distribution was obtained using image processing and three-dimensional object classification. The study revealed local segregation of phases within each of the regions, porosity distribution dependency on temperature and local composition, preferential porosity nucleation sites, porosity evolution trends, interconnectivity, possible sinks/nucleation sites for porosity and precipitates, as well as possible mechanisms for fission gas release.</p>

This diploma project investigates serial produced housing and the possibilities of type house construction. In spring 2020, the government report “Building and living at lower cost - proposals for better competition in housing construction” was published. It proposes a change in the building law that would allow planning permissions for serial produced multi-family houses despite the projects violating the detailed plan or area regulations. I used this report as a starting point for an analysis of affordable housing in Sweden. As a part of that analysis, I have focused the architectural research on Kombohusen sold by SABO, which has currently been reproduced on more than one-hundred sites across Sweden. Additionally, I did parallel research on the work of Walter Segal who developed a method of timber construction in the 70s that enabled cheap timber buildings to be constructed by non-professional self-builders as an alternative way of creating affordable housing.
 Both the research of the serial produced and the self-built revealed to me that their core architectural concepts lie in the detail drawing. That is why this diploma explores constructional details of a house that could potentially be mass produced. It proposes a system based on a lightweight sandwich unit made of timber. The unit forms the basis for larger elements that can be transported on site and erected rapidly.
 The design of the units evolved around a belief that one of the challenges of an architect lies in drawing and redrawing buildings that can serve society beyond the life cycle of their original shape. As such, the units, the elements, and the house should be easy to assemble, adjust and dismantle to ensure long-term maintenance and reusability.

This thesis is part of a project at Bombardier’s Object Controller System. This system acts as a communication interface for several sub-systems that control the railway traffic. Therefore, part of the safety and availability of railway transportation is dependent on the performance and reliability of this system especially the digital communication system that handles the board-to-board communication. Thus, Bombardier has implemented new high-speed LVDS channels to use instead of the implemented RS-485 channels to improve the board-to-board communication performance in the Object Controller System but they lack a transceiver. This thesis work explores possible transceiver solutions that achieve Bombardier requirements. Reusability is very important for Bombardier for safety compliance and certification. Therefore, the investigation was carried out by looking into what is currently implemented and then was carried on by looking into transceivers that used in highspeed communication and check their suitability and compliance for the FPGA and the requirements. This exploration results in three experiments for different transceiver architecture. The first experiment exploits the currently implemented transceiver architecture and it is not suitable for high-speed data rate due to a limitation in the buffer. The second experiment overcomes the buffer limitation by using a clock domain crossing buffer and results in a 100-time faster system. The third experiment aimed to achieve a higher data rate by using a clock and data recovery transceiver and results in a promising solution but needs some enhancements. For testing, a verification methodology following the one-way stress test architecture has been developed using VHDL for simulation and for in-chip testing and the results were verified using ChipScope logic analyzer from Xilinx. In addition, a thermal test for the solution from the second experiment has been performed. / Denna avhandling är en del av ett projekt på Bombardiers Object Controller System. Detta system fungerar som ett kommunikationsgränssnitt för flera delsystem som styr järnvägstrafiken. Därför är en del av säkerheten och tillgängligheten av järnvägstransporten beroende av systemets prestanda och tillförlitlighet, särskilt det digitala kommunikationssystemet som hanterar kommunikationen ombord. Bombardier har sålunda implementerat nya höghastighets LVDS-kanaler för att använda istället för de implementerade RS-485-kanalerna för att förbättra kommunikationsprestandan ombord i objektkontrollen, men de saknar en transceiver. Denna avhandling arbetar med att undersöka möjliga transceiverlösningar som uppnår Bombardier-krav. Återanvändbarhet är mycket viktigt för Bombardier för säkerhetsöverensstämmelse och certifiering. Undersökningen genomfördes därför genom att undersöka vad som för närvarande implementeras och sedan genomföras genom att titta på transceivers som används i höghastighetskommunikation och kontrollera deras lämplighet och överensstämmelse för FPGA och kraven. Denna undersökning resulterar i tre experiment för olika transceiverarkitektur. Det första experimentet utnyttjar den nuvarande implementerade transceiverarkitekturen. Den är inte lämplig för höghastighetsdatakommunikation på grund av en begränsning i bufferten. Det andra experimentet övervinns buffertbegränsningen genom att använda en klockdomänöverföringsbuffert vilket resulterar i ett 100-timmars snabbare system. Det tredje experimentet syftade till att uppnå en högre datahastighet genom att använda en klockoch dataåterställningstransceiver vilket resulterar i en lovande lösning men behöver vissa förbättringar. För testning har en verifieringsmetod som följer envägsstresstestarkitekturen utvecklats med hjälp av VHDL för simulering och för inchip-testning. Resultaten verifierades med hjälp av ChipScope logic analyzer från Xilinx. Dessutom har ett termiskt test för lösningen från det andra experimentet utförts.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第20071号 / 医博第4164号 / 新制||医||1018(附属図書館) / 33187 / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 黒田 知宏, 教授 松田 文彦, 教授 楠見 明弘 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

In this thesis I analyzed three different literary works; A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers (2020), Bunny by Mona Awad (2019), and Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi (1991) through the perspective of the female killer. The aim of the thesis was to analyze the so called “female rage” and what led the women in these novels to murder men. I also discussed how the female killers were presented and if and how the women were perceived as monstrous. The method I chose to do this was close reading, and the theory I used was queer theory. I mostly used Jack Halberstam’s book Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters to contextualize my arguments as well as Judith Butler’s Genustrubbel and Sam Holmqvist’s chapter in Litteraturvetenskap II. The analysis showed that there is a connection between the monster and queerness, and that each of the women I wrote about has both monstrous and queer aspects. The analysis also showed the importance of power and how most of the motivation behind the women killing the men was their lack of power in a patriarchal society.

Cyber-physical systems are computers equipped with sensors and actuators that enable them to interact with their surrounding environments. Ground vehicles, drones, and manufacturing robots are examples of such systems that require timing guarantees in addition to functional correctness to achieve their mission objectives. These systems often use multiple microcontroller boards for workload distribution and physical redundancy. The emergence of PC-class embedded systems featuring high processing capabilities and abundant resources presents an opportunity to consolidate separate microcontroller boards as software-defined functions into fewer computer systems. For instance, current automotive systems utilize upwards of 100 electronic control units (ECUs) for chassis, body, power-train, infotainment, and vehicle control services. Consolidation saves manufacturing costs, reduces wiring, simplifies packaging in space-limited situations, and streamlines software update delivery to end-users. However, consolidating functions on PC-class hardware does not address the real-time I/O challenges. A fundamental problem in such real-time solutions is the handling of device input and output in a timely manner. For example, a control system might require input data from a sensor to be sampled and processed regularly so that output signals to actuators occur within specific delay bounds. Input/output (I/O) devices connect to the host computer using different types of bus interfaces not necessarily supported by PC-class hardware natively. Examples of such interfaces include Controller Area Network (CAN) and FlexRay, which are prominent in the automotive world, but are not found in PC-class embedded systems. Universal Serial Bus (USB) is now ubiquitous in the PC-class domain, in part due to its support for many classes of devices with simplified hardware needed to connect to the host, and can be utilized to bridge this gap. USB provides the throughput and delay capabilities for next-generation high bandwidth sensors to be integrated with actuators in control area networks. However, typical USB host controller drivers suffer from potential timing delays that affect the delivery of data between tasks and devices. This Ph.D. thesis examines the use of Universal Serial Bus (USB) as the physical fabric for host-to-device and host-to-host communication, without special switching hardware or protocol translation logic, and through a unified programming interface. Combined with the real-time scheduling framework of the Quest RTOS, this work investigates how to form networks of I/O devices and computing nodes over USB with end-to-end timing guarantees. The main contribution of this thesis is a USB-centric design solution for real-time cyber-physical systems with distributed computing nodes.

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