Firms in highly dynamic environments focusing on innovation in their products and services, often encounter elevated amounts of uncertainty regarding the future direction of technological change. Finding reliable and imbedded information enhances a firm’s ability to tackle new markets and take advantage of possible hidden opportunities. To reduce uncertainty, obtain hidden knowledge, and gain competitive advantage, environmental scanning, which is one of the main components of foresight, is recommended by scholars of strategic management. The process of detecting weak signals for shedding light what one authority calls “blurry future zones” (Day & Schoemaker, 2005, p.1) has currently been receiving attention in environmental scanning studies. Some studies emphasize the importance of the subject; yet they offer few practical methodologies for actual cases. To help address this gap, this research introduces a new approach for detecting weak signals during Internet-based environmental scanning by applying the Cluto toolkit (see Section 4.7) plus using human judgment. This novel methodology is applied to the application of Micro Tiles, a recent innovative product of a digital display company located in Ontario, Canada, Christie Digital Company. In the conduct of this exploratory research, about 40,000 HTML pages were retrieved from the Internet in a search during 2009. To extract weak signals information from the retrieved unstructured texts, documents were grouped into a number of clusters by the CLUTO software. Two subject matter experts compared and evaluated the cluster results for the purpose of finding potentially relevant information in regard to the company’s strategic intent. Analyzing the clusters, the experts reduced the number of clustered documents from the original corpus into smaller sets with the goal of finding more relevant and unexpected documents (weak signals). The relevancy and expectedness of information in documents were two measurements as related to weak signals. The trends of the study indicate that as anticipated both experts found more unexpected documents in the smaller sets rather than the larger ones. Moreover, regarding one expert’s analysis, the smaller sets contain documents that are more relevant to the domain of interest. Overall, according to one expert, documents existing in the smaller sets display more weak signals. This emerging methodology offers a practical procedure to apply web-based information in the development of a company’s environmental scanning procedures. Using this methodology, managers can employ both computer tools and human sense-making methods to detect potential weak signals and reduce certain biases in the detection process.

When a malfunction occurs in a traffic signal controller cabinet, the signal is automatically placed into malfunction flash mode as a safety precaution. During this event, drivers are presented with one of two possible scenarios: flashing yellow on the major street and flashing red on the minor street, or flashing red on all the approaches. Volumes and percentages of car stopping were collected at fifty-one study intersections in the Atlanta regions. By means of the VISSIM microsimulation software a sample of intersections was simulated under the two malfunction scenarios and the signalized one. Based on output data such as delay and queue, the performances of each simulated intersection is compared and recommendations on which mode of flash must be used in case of malfunction are provided.

Home medical equipment becomes increasingly popular as VLSI fabrication technology advances. However, there are two important factors for realizing a miniaturized biochip: low noise [1] and low power. Firstly, physiological signals are very susceptible to interference while the amplitude of the signal is only a few millivolts or less. If the circuit cannot reject noise effectively, it is hard to amplify the signal and obtain the output voltage of the recording system accurately. Secondly, it is not convenient to replace the batteries frequently when using the portable measurement instrument for the patients. This thesis is focused on the measurement of physiological signals, such as electrocardiography (ECG) [2], electroneurogram (ENG) [3] and electromyography (EMG) [4] , and designing an all-in-one recording system to measure the different physiological signals in a chip. For this purpose, a programmable multi-parameter system for recording of the wide range of physiological signals is designed. The system provides two types of input transconductance stages, BiCMOS and CMOS. BiCMOS amplifiers provide high gain , low noise [5] and low offset voltage suitable for the small amplitude of the physiological signal. On the other hand, CMOS amplifiers provide practically infinite input impedance and ultra-low leakage current. The system also provides three selectable amplifier modes: (a) double-differential amplifier, (b) single-differential amplifier in channel 1, (c) single-differential amplifier in channel 2. The double-differential amplifier provides a high common-mode rejection and adjustable gain for each channel to further reduce common-mode interference. The single-differential amplifier (channel 1 or channel 2) in the recording system are also accessible as differential-input and single-ended output channels. Moreover, the system provides an offset compensation structure to prevent the amplifier from exceeding the input range. The offset compensation system can selectively be turned off to reduce the power consumption.

This research proposes a new signal operation strategy aimed at efficient utilization of green time by cutting down on the start up and response loss times. The idea is to have a "pre-signal" on each main approach a few hundred feet upstream of the intersection in addition to the main intersection signal, which is coordinated with the pre-signal. The offset between the main and pre-signal ensures that the majority of start up losses does not occur at the main signal. The benefits of the system under various traffic conditions were evaluated based on analysis of the queue discharge process and Corridor Simulation (CORSIM) study. The proposed measure should reduce the travel time and total control delay for the signalized network. To attain the objective the following two studies were undertaken: 1. Development of a queue discharge model to investigate the expected benefits of the system. 2. Simulation of the system: In the second part of the research, the proposed strategy was tested using CORSIM to evaluate its performance vis-à-vis the baseline case. The queue discharge model (QDM) was found to be linear in nature in contrast to prior expectations. The model was used to quantify the benefits obtained from the pre-signal system. The result of this analysis indicated that the proposed strategy would yield significant travel time savings and reductions in total control delay. In addition to the QDM analysis, CORSIM simulations were used to code various hypothetical scenarios to test the concept under various constraints and limitations. As per expectations, it was found that the system was beneficial for high demand levels and longer offsets. The upper limit on offsets was determined by visual observation of platoon dispersion and therefore the maximum offset distance was restricted to 450 feet. For scenarios where split phasing was used, the break even point in terms of demand level was found to be 2500 vph on a three lane approach, whereas that for a lag-lag type of phasing strategy was found to be 1800 vph, also on a three lane approach.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-130).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-240). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Helsinki University of Technology, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-55). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES))--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Christian Darken, Curtis Blais. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-104). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Renatus N. Mussa, Florida State University, Dept. of Civil Engineering. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Mar. 8, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-89).