Four elementary school children were tested on 120 words containing the short e (e.g., ten, pen) and short a (e.g., tan, pan) sounds. Words were tested in the hear-write (H/W) and see-say (S/S) channels. No programmed consequences were scheduled during baseline (BL) tests 1-3. After BL, an error analysis categorized words based on channel error and topography of error. Praise was delivered during tests 4-6 for correct responses. Children's responses were variable within channel and across channels for a majority of words. By the end of the praise phase, there was a decrease in the number of words with errors, for all children in their error word group. Error topographies began to stabilize for some words during praise.

O consumo de energia se torna cada vez mais importante para a arquitetura de processadores, onde o número de cores dentro de um mesmo chip está aumentando mas o total de energia disponível se mantém no mesmo nível ou até mesmo se reduz. Assim, técnicas para economizar energia, tais como opções de escala de frequência e desligamento automático de subsistemas, estão sendo usadas para manter a troca entre energia e desempenho. Para se obter alto desempenho, os atuais Chip Multiprocessors (CMPs) integram grandes memórias cache a fim de reduzir a latência média para acesso a memória principal, através da alocação do conjunto de dados da aplicação dentro do chip. Essas memórias cache tem sido projetadas tradicionalmente para explorar a localidade temporal usando políticas de substituição inteligentes e localidade espacial buscando todos os dados da linha da cache após uma falta de dados. Entretanto, estudos recentes mostraram que o número de sub-blocos dentro da linha da memória cache, que são realmente usados, costuma ser baixo, sendo que, os sub-blocos que são usados recebem poucos acessos antes de se tornarem mortos (isto é, nunca mais são acessados). Além disso, muitas da linhas da memória cache permanecem ligadas por longos períodos de tempo, mesmo que os dados não sejam usados novamente ou são inválidos. Para linhas de cache modificadas, a memória cache aguarda até que a linha seja expulsa para que esta seja gravada (write-back) de volta no próximo nível de memória. Essas escritas competem com as requisições de leitura (demanda do processador e prébusca da cache), aumentando a pressão no controlador de memória. Por essas razões, a eficiência energética e o desempenho das memórias cache não são ideais. Essa tese propõe a aplicação de preditores de uso de linhas da cache para aumentar a eficiência energética das memórias cache. São propostos os mecanismos Dead Sub-Block Predictor (DSBP) e Dead Line and Early Write-Back Predictor (DEWP) para permitir economia de energia sem que haja degradação do desempenho. DSBP é usado para prever quais sub-blocos da linha da cache serão usados e quantas vezes eles serão acessados de forma a trazer para a cache apenas os sub-blocos úteis e desliga-los após eles serem acessados pelo número de vezes previsto. DEWP prevê linhas de cache mortas assim que elas recebem o último acesso, desligando essas linhas. As linhas sujas são escalonadas para sofrerem write-back após a última operação de escrita, aumentando o potencial de salvar energia, reduzindo também a pressão no controlador de memória. Ambos os mecanismos propostos também reduzem a poluição nas memórias cache, dando prioridade para a expulsão de linhas mortas, melhorando as atuais políticas de substituição. Embora cada mecanismo apresentado seja capaz de funcionar separadamente dentro do sistema, ambos os mecanismos podem também ser misturados em uma mesma hierarquia de cache. Essa implementação mista é interessante pois a granularidade de sub-bloco é preferível para níveis de cache próximos do processador, onde as linhas de memória cache são expulsas rapidamente, enquanto o último nível de cache tende a usar toda a linha antes da sua expulsão. Com o intuito de avaliar os mecanismos propostos, é apresentado o Simulator of Non- Uniform Cache Architectures (SiNUCA). Esse simulador de microarquitetura com precisão de ciclos é validado em termos de desempenho e consumo de energia através da comparação com um processador real. Os resultados de desempenho foram obtidos executando aplicações das cargas de trabalho single-threaded do conjunto SPEC-CPU2006 e aplicações multi-threaded dos conjuntos SPEC-OMP2001 e NAS-NPB. Os resultados relativos a energia foram obtidos integrando o SiNUCA com as ferramentas de modelagem Multi-core Power, Area, and Timing (McPAT) e CACTI. Quando aplicados os mecanismos em todos os níveis de memória cache, observou-se em média uma redução de 36% no consumo de energia usando o DSBP, 25% usando o DEWP e 37% quando usou-se o DSBP nos níveis L1 e L2 e o DEWP no último nível. Todas essas reduções causaram uma perda desprezível de desempenho de menos de 4% em média. / Energy consumption is becoming more important for processor architectures, where the number of cores inside the chip is increasing and the total power budget is kept at the same level or even reduced. Thus, energy saving techniques such as frequency scaling options and automatic shutdown of sub-systems are being used to maintain the trade-off between power and performance. To deliver high performance, current Chip Multiprocessors (CMPs) integrate large caches in order to reduce the average memory access latency by allocating the applications’ working set on-chip. These cache memories have traditionally been designed to exploit temporal locality by using smart replacement policies, and spatial locality by fetching entire cache lines from memory on a cache miss. However, recent studies have shown that the number of sub-blocks within a line that are actually used is often low, and those sub-blocks that are used are accessed only a few times before becoming dead (that is, never accessed again). Additionally, many of the cache lines remain powered for a long period of time even if the data is not used again, or is invalid. For modified cache lines, the cache memory waits until the line is evicted to perform the write-back to next memory level. These write-backs compete with read requests (processor demand and cache prefetch), increasing the pressure on the memory controller. For these reasons, the energy efficiency and performance of cache memories are not ideal. This thesis introduces cache line usage predictors to increase the energy efficiency of cache memories. We propose the Dead Sub-Block Predictor (DSBP) and Dead Line and Early Write-Back Predictor (DEWP) mechanisms to enable energy savings without performance degradation. DSBP is used to predict which sub-blocks of a cache line will be actually accessed and how many times they will be used in order to bring into the cache only those sub-blocks that are necessary, and power them off after they are accessed the predicted number of times. DEWP predicts dead lines as soon as they receive the last access, and turns off these lines. Dirty lines are scheduled for write-back after the last write operation occurs, increasing the energy savings potential and also reducing the pressure on the memory controller. Both proposed mechanisms also reduce pollution in cache memories by prioritizing dead lines for eviction in the existing replacement policy. Although each introduced mechanism is capable of performing separately inside a system, both mechanisms can also be mixed in the same cache hierarchy. This mixed implementation is interesting because the sub-block granularity is more suitable for cache levels closer to the processor, where the cache lines are quickly evicted, while the Last- Level Cache (LLC) tends to use the whole cache line before its eviction. In order to evaluate our proposed mechanisms, we introduce the Simulator of Non- Uniform Cache Architectures (SiNUCA). This cycle-accurate microarchitecture simulator is validated in terms of performance and energy consumption by comparing it to a real processor. Our performance results were obtained executing single-threaded applications from SPEC-CPU2006 and multi-threaded applications from SPEC-OMP2001 and NASNPB benchmark suites. The energy related results were obtained by integrating SiNUCA with the Multi-core Power, Area, and Timing (McPAT) framework and the CACTI power modeling tool. When applying our mechanisms on all the cache levels, we observe on average a 36% energy reduction for DSBP, 25% energy reduction using DEWP and an average reduction of 37% in the energy consumption applying DSBP on L1 and L2 and DEWP on the LLC. All these reductions caused a negligible performance loss of less than 4% on average.

Submitted by Jakeline Ortega (jakortega@unoeste.br) on 2017-07-21T13:34:11Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dilma Pereira dos Santos.pdf: 3316929 bytes, checksum: f23974c4aa0daa95988d34321b4e4e5f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-21T13:34:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dilma Pereira dos Santos.pdf: 3316929 bytes, checksum: f23974c4aa0daa95988d34321b4e4e5f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-18 / The present dissertation was developed for the Master of Education degree at the Universidade do Oeste Paulista (Unoeste). The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of certain educational tools as pedagogical resources to promote the development of writing and reading comprehension skills in deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired students. This study is based on technological and human sociocultural theories which help one understand the process of learning the written and spoken Portuguese language. Additionally, it is also based on the ethical and legal guidelines that promote the use of educational tools as pedagogical resources in teaching deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired students. A group of six deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired students participated in this study. Their ages ranged from 9 to 10. These students were enrolled in a school that serves hearing and speech impaired students in Foz do Iguacu, Parana, Brazil. This qualitative study. As part of the methodology, the following took place: Structured diagnostic observation, collection of data produced by students, text interpretation, and verification of the quality of texts produced by the students. Next, the researcher applied intervention activities by using HagaQue, Tux Pent, and Scrapbooking which are tools that focus on writing and reading skills. A second evaluation was conducted to determine if any significant change was found in the students’ writing and reading comprehension skills. Results show the significance and validity of these educational tools as pedagogical resources to promote the development of writing and reading comprehension skills in deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired students. / A presente dissertação foi desenvolvida no Programa de Mestrado em Educação da Universidade do Oeste Paulista (Unoeste). A pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar a influência de Objetos de Aprendizagem como recurso pedagógico para promover o desenvolvimento da leitura e escrita para alunos com deficiência auditiva. Para fundamentação foram utilizadas bases teóricas voltadas ao sociointeracionismo no qual o humano e o tecnológico interagem no processo de aprendizagem da língua portuguesa escrita; bem como bases legais que sustentam o uso de objetos educacionais no desenvolvimento dos alunos com deficiência auditiva. Os sujeitos da pesquisa foram seis alunos com deficiência auditiva, entre 9 e 10 anos de idade; devidamente matriculados no ensino fundamental, no qual cursavam o quarto ano em uma escola em Foz do Iguaçu (PR). A pesquisa foi de cunho qualitativa. Como procedimentos metodológicos para coleta de dados promoveu-se observação estruturada diagnóstica, análise dos documentos da produção de textos desenvolvidos pelos alunos, a fim de verificar a qualidade da produção e interpretação textual. Em seguida, foram aplicadas atividades de intervenção com os objetos educacionais HagáQuê e Tux Paint que visavam à produção escrita e leitura. Uma segunda avaliação foi realizada para determinar se houve mudança quanto à produção da escrita e interpretação textual. Como resultado, verificou-se a importância e validade pedagógica de tais objetos educacionais no processo de ensino e aprendizagem da Língua Portuguesa para alunos com deficiência auditiva.

This thesis deals with an effective solution of the parallel I/O of the k-Wave tool, which is designed for time domain acoustic and ultrasound simulations. k-Wave is a supercomputer application, it runs on a Lustre file system and it requires to be implemented with MPI and stores the data in suitable data format (HDF5). I designed three methods of optimization which fits k-Wave's needs. It uses accumulation and redistribution techniques. In comparison with the native write, every optimization method led to better write speed, up to 13.6GB/s. It is possible to use these methods to optimize every data distributed application with the write speed issue.

This dissertation investigates the challenges faced by learners of English for academic purposes (EAP) when required to complete writing assignments that use source texts. In order to address this problem, I explore the issue from the perspectives of applied linguistic researchers, writing program administrators, and classroom composition instructors. These three perspectives are highlighted in distinct articles that build on one another to create a more complete understanding of the challenges that EAP students face when writing from sources. The first article contains a literature review of relevant studies that explore the reading-to-write construct. Experts suggest that unintentional plagiarism, or patchwriting, can be attributed to a lack of cultural and linguistic competence. In order to address these limitations, researchers identify several reading and writing subskills that are integral to success in academic source writing. The literature review concludes with recommendations for teaching and testing contexts. The second article details a rater training evaluation study that resulted in unexpected, but welcomed, recommendations. Teacher-raters provided feedback that influenced how the institution made use of benchmark portfolios to train teacher-raters as well as inform students about writing achievement standards. The increased use of benchmark portfolios also helped to clarify classroom and program standards regarding citation, attribution, and anti-plagiarism policies. The final article is a practical guide for classroom composition instructors. I outline a recommended curriculum for teaching source writing to EAP students. The guide incorporates the findings of the literature review and the evaluation study into a collaborative and iterative pedagogical model. This recursive approach to EAP writing instruction helps students to diagnose and develop the advanced literacy subskills required for successful source integration into their writing. As a set, the three articles demonstrate that effective solutions to instructional issues can be developed when a problem is approached from multiple perspectives. Indeed, linguistics-based research, program administration, and teacher experience can be combined to produce a model for writing instruction that acknowledges principles of second-language advanced literacy and accounts for learner struggles as students develop source writing skills.

The overall purpose of this study is to examine how students and teachers state that they view the use of digital writing tools during the first years of school. Is the use seen as training the ability to use them operationally, what I in this work call goals, or are they seen as a tool to change, improve or simplify the writing process, what I call meaning? By using an interview method where students and teachers talk about the use of digital writing tools in groups, pairs or individually, I try to investigate what opportunities, positive aspects, limitations and negative aspects they state when it comes to digital writing tools. I also intend to investigate whether this can be linked to the view of digital writing tools as meaning or goal.   The teaching of reading and writing during the first years of school is influenced by both teachers' and pupils' thoughts regarding language and learning. How we view the ability to read and write and how best to learn it affects how we organize and think about the teaching we do. This work focuses on digital writing, which I define as writing that is mediated by digital tools. In this work, I use two different approaches to investigate digital writing. Hyland (2020), which is based on the concepts of product-, process- and reader-focused, and Merchant (2008), which argues that digital competence is either seen as a set of skills, as a tool for learning, or as an opportunity for transformation of subjects' representational possibilities. By applying these approaches to the concepts of meaning and goal, I get a model to start from in the abductive approach I use when I conduct a thematic analysis of the results my interviews generated.  Most students are positive about typing digitally but mention that they find it difficult to use the keyboard. The teachers also have an overall positive attitude but mention technical problems, such as logging in and connecting, as negative aspects. Both teachers and students express that the use of digital writing tools is seen as training the ability to use them (goal). Using the digital tools to improve, change and simplify the writing process (meaning) is mentioned to a greater extent by the teachers, even though the students express that it is easier to move, edit and change the text. The aspect that the digital writing tools increase social interaction is not mentioned at all by the students, but by several of the teachers.   Learning with digital tools is about being able to use them in appropriate ways. To be able to do this, both the operational skills and the knowledge of how digital resources can be used as tools for learning need to be in place.

Big bath accounting är en strategi där beslutsfattarna i ett företag manipulerar det redovisade resultatet efter ens egna preferenser, ofta för att påverka resultatet negativt genom nedskrivning av immateriella tillgångar. Tidigare forskning har visat att fenomenet uppstår mer frekvent i samband med en nytillsatt VD.Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka förekomsten av Big bath genom nedskrivning av goodwill bland börsnoterade bolag i Sverige, och ifall en nytillsatt VD kan vara en av förklaringarna till fenomenet. Studien har en deduktiv ansats och studiens frågeställningar har analyserats med hjälp av en kvantitativ dataanalys.Studiens insamlade data har hämtats ifrån företagens årsredovisningar under tidsperioden år 2005-2013. Den insamlade datan ligger till grund för de statistiska testerna som utförts. Resultatet visar att det finns ett samband mellan goodwillnedskrivningar och en nytillsatt VD samt goodwillnedskrivningar och ett negativt resultat. Vidare upptäcks ett positivt samband mellan Big bath och en nytillsatt VD samt Big bath och ett negativt resultat vilket tyder på att strategin existerar på Stockholmsbörsen. / Big bath accounting is a strategy where the decision makers of a company manipulates the stated result according to their own preferences, most often to influence the result negatively by writing down its intangible assets. Earlier studies have shown that this phenomenon occurs more frequently in connection with a newly appointed CEO.This paper aims to investigate the occurrence of Big bath by writing down goodwill among public companies in Sweden, and to investigate if a newly appointed CEO could be one of the explanations to this phenomenon. This study has a deductive approach and the research questions have been analyzed with a quantitative data analysis.The data in this study have been collected from the companies financial statements during the time period between 2005-2013. The collected data have been used for the statistical tests that this paper contains. The result shows a positive connection between writing down goodwill and a newly appointed CEO and also between writing down goodwill and a negative result. Furthermore, a positive connection was found between Big bath and a newly appointed CEO and also between Big bath and a negative result which indicates that this strategy exists on the Stockholm stock exchange.The essay is written in Swedish.

Sammanfattning Tidigare forskning visar att elever i de yngre åren i huvudsak möter skönlitterära texter och att detta kan innebära svårigheter för dem i klass 4 då de förväntas förstå olika texttyper. Denna studie undersöker vilka texttyper elever i förskoleklass till årskurs 3 får möta på två olika skolor i två skilda kommuner och om lärarna anser att det kan påverka elevers läsförståelse och läsintresse. Undersökningen gjordes genom kvalitativa intervjuer med verksamma lärare och baseras på en lärandesyn utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv och begreppet literacy. Resultatet visar att de yngre barnen på de två deltagande skolorna till stor del får möta olika texttyper och att lärarna anser att det främjar både läsförståelse och läsintresse. / Abstract Previous research show that students in the younger years mainly meets fictional text types and that this may cause difficulties for them in 4th-grade when they are expected to understand different kinds of text. This study examines which types of text students in preschool to grade three meet at two different schools in two separate municipalities, and if teachers believe that it can affect students reading comprehension and interest in reading. The survey was conducted through qualitative interviews with practicing teachers and is based on a learning approach from a sociocultural perspective and the literacy concept. The result show that the younger children at the two participating schools for the most part get to meet different types of texts and that the teachers considers it promotes both reading comprehension and interest in reading.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka några elevers uppfattningar angående det stöd de fått under sin skoltid med anledning av deras läs- och skrivsvårigheter. De intervjuade eleverna i studien går i årskurs tre och årskurs fyra. Alla de intervjuade eleverna uppvisar läs- och skrivsvårigheter alternativt dyslexi. Data har samlats in genom kvalitativa intervjuer. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är de tre specialpedagogiska perspektiven: det kompensatoriska, det kritiska och dilemmaperspektivet. Resultatet har analyserats utifrån de specialpedagogiska perspektiven genom att försöka hitta ett mönster och tema i de intervjuade elevernas svar. I resultatet framkommer det att stödinsatserna som utformats för eleverna mestadels utgår ifrån det kompensatoriska perspektivet. Det framkommer även att elevernas uppfattningar av stöd i skolan ser olika ut. En gemensam uppfattning som de intervjuade eleverna har är att de får stöd både enskilt och i klass med anledning av deras läs- och skrivsvårigheter. Det visar sig dock i resultatet att det stöd som eleverna får inte alltid är välplanerat mellan specialläraren och läraren. Något som kommer fram i resultatet är att eleverna vill vara delaktiga i hur stödet ska se ut och var de ska få stödet. Det visar sig också i studien att stödet som ges till eleverna måste utgå ifrån varje enskild individ för att stödet ska gynna elevernas kunskapsutveckling. / The aim of this study is to examine how pupils in grades three and four perceive the support they receive with regards to their reading and writing difficulties. The theoretical framework for this study is based on the three perspectives connected to special education, namely the compensatory perspective, the critical perspective and the dilemma perspective. In order to collect data, interviews are used and the results are then categorized and analyzed by using the three perspectives connected to special education, as mentioned above. To begin with, the results indicate that the compensatory perspective was the predominant measure used when supporting pupils but it also becomes clear that pupils perceive the support they get in different ways. Moreover, all of the pupils state that they receive help connected to their reading and writing difficulties, both individually and in class. At the same time, though, it becomes clear that the collaboration between the special education teacher and the class teacher is sometimes lacking. Finally, this study shows that pupils wish to be more involved in the process of deciding the frames for the support they need. Another conclusion is that the support given has to focus on the demands and needs of each individual in order for the support to be beneficial to each pupil’s learning process.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka läs- och skrivinlärningen i förskoleklass och årskurs 1. Studien undersöker när elevers läs- och skrivinlärning påbörjas och hur lång tid denna inlärning tar. Dessutom undersöker studien vilka metoder som lärarna använder sig av i sin undervisning för att utveckla elevers läs- och skrivförmåga. En enkät skickades ut för att samla data om hur verksamma lärare i förskoleklass och årskurs 1 arbetar med läs- och skrivinlärningen med hjälp av Läsning på talets grund, Whole language, Tragetonmetoden och Wittingmetoden. Lärarna fick även nämna övriga metoder de använde sig av i sin undervisning. De flesta lärare börjar med läs- och skrivinlärningen i sin undervisning direkt då de får sina elever. Denna läs- och skrivinlärning tar ungefär ett halvår för en elev utan större läs- och skrivsvårigheter. Allra vanligast är det att en lärare använder sig av en blandning av läs- och skrivinlärningsmetoder i sin undervisning. / The aim of this study is to investigate how educators in preschool-class and year 1 in primary school teach their pupils how to read and write, and what methods teachers use to aid this process. The aim is also to see what the connection is between the time it takes for the pupils to learn how to read and write and their development towards literacy. A questionnaire was sent out to collect data of how teachers in preschool-class and year 1 work with literacy using LTG, Whole language, the Wittingmethod and the Tragetonmethod. The teachers also got the opportunity to mention other methods that they used in their education. Most of the teachers immediately start teaching the pupils how to read and write. Learning how to read and write takes approximately half a year for a pupil without any reading and/or writing difficulties. Teachers commonly use a variety of methods in their education.