Shareholder Value Creation in the Automobile Industry in India

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Safe code transfromations for speculative execution in real-time systems

Although compiler optimization techniques are standard and successful in non-real-time systems, if naively applied, they can destroy safety guarantees and deadlines in hard real-time systems. For this reason, real-time systems developers have tended to avoid automatic compiler optimization of their code. However, real-time applications in several areas have been growing substantially in size and complexity in recent years. This size and complexity makes it impossible for real-time programmers to write optimal code, and consequently indicates a need for compiler optimization. Recently researchers have developed or modified analyses and transformations to improve performance without degrading worst-case execution times. Moreover, these optimization techniques can sometimes transform programs which may not meet constraints/deadlines, or which result in timeouts, into deadline-satisfying programs. One such technique, speculative execution, also used for example in parallel computing and databases, can enhance performance by executing parts of the code whose execution may or may not be needed. In some cases, rollback is necessary if the computation turns out to be invalid. However, speculative execution must be applied carefully to real-time systems so that the worst-case execution path is not extended. Deterministic worst-case execution for satisfying hard real-time constraints, and speculative execution with rollback for improving average-case throughput, appear to lie on opposite ends of a spectrum of performance requirements and strategies. Deterministic worst-case execution for satisfying hard real-time constraints, and speculative execution with rollback for improving average-case throughput, appear to lie on opposite ends of a spectrum of performance requirements and strategies. Nonetheless, this thesis shows that there are situations in which speculative execution can improve the performance of a hard real-time system, either by enhancing average performance while not affecting the worst-case, or by actually decreasing the worst-case execution time. The thesis proposes a set of compiler transformation rules to identify opportunities for speculative execution and to transform the code. Proofs for semantic correctness and timeliness preservation are provided to verify safety of applying transformation rules to real-time systems. Moreover, an extensive experiment using simulation of randomly generated real-time programs have been conducted to evaluate applicability and profitability of speculative execution. The simulation results indicate that speculative execution improves average execution time and program timeliness. Finally, a prototype implementation is described in which these transformations can be evaluated for realistic applications

Compiler-Assisted Scheduling for Real-Time Applications: A Static Alternative to Low-Level Tuning

Developing a real-time system requires finding a balance between the timing constraints and the functional requirements. Achieving this balance often requires last-minute, low-level intervention in the code modules -- via intensive hardware-based instrumentation and manual program optimizations. In this dissertation we present an automated, static alternative to this kind of human-intensive work. Our approach is motivated by recent advances in compiler technologies, which we extend to two specific issues on real-time programming, that is, feasibility and schedulability. A task is infeasible if its execution time stretches over its deadline. To eliminate such faults, we have developed a synthesis method that (1) inspects all infeasible paths, and then (2) moves instructions out of those paths to shorten the execution time. On the other hand, schedulability of a task set denotes an ability to guarantee the deadlines of all tasks in the application. This property is affected by interactions between the tasks, as well as their individual execution times and deadlines. To address the schedulability problem, we have developed a task transformation method based on program slicing. The method decomposes a task into two subthreads: the IO-handler component that must meet the original deadline, and the state-update component that can be postponed past the deadline. This delayed-deadline approach contributes to the schedulability of the overall application. We also present a new fixed-priority preemptive scheduling strategy, which yields both a feasible priority ordering and a feasible task-slicing metric. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-33

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Analytical Study of Labour Productivity and its Impact on Banking Sector

It is the era of globalization and the business environment is very turbulent. It is changing drastically. Due to these, it has become very difficult to carry out the business activities effectively and efficiently. Banks play very important role in the economic life of the nation. Today, modern banks are very useful for the utilization of the resources of the country. The banks are mobilizing the savings of the people for the investment purposes. The savings are encouraged and saving rate increases. If there would be no banks then a great portion of a capital of the country would remain idle. After independence, the development of banking sector picked up momentum. Since 1991, public and private sector banks are co-exiting and providing banking service to the customers. They are playing very important role for overall economy development. In service sector, involvement of human element is of very high and this is application in banking service too. Attitude, interest, motivation, skills and knowledge, behaviour, promptness, response to call etc. all are related to employees. These factors affect the individual and organizational performance. Hence, the concept of labour productivity is banking sector has great significance in present time. In present stiff competitive situation, it has become difficult to attract customers, retain and motivate them for further business. When employees give better performance then only the profitability of the banking unit will go high. Therefore, the output per person matter a lot. So the importance of productivity concept has been felt everywhere. That is why this topic has been selected for study purpose

RTR - uma abordagem reflexiva para programação de aplicações tempo real

Tese (Doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnologico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia ElétricaEsta tese propõe um modelo e uma linguagem de programação que exploram a potencialidade dos paradigmas de orientação a objetos e reflexão computacional, visando contribuir para a solução de vários problemas encontrados atualmente na programação de sistemas tempo real. O modelo proposto, denominado Modelo RTR, permite a definição e o uso de restrições temporais e algoritmos de escalonamento de acordo com as especificidades da aplicação e de forma independente do suporte de execução subjacente, provendo flexibilidade e independência de ambiente operacional. Além disso, a separação entre questões funcionais e de controle, resultante do uso de reflexão computacional, facilita o gerenciamento da complexidade e incrementa a possibilidade de reutilização e a capacidade de manutenção dos sistemas desenvolvidos. A linguagem proposta, denominada Java/RTR, é uma extensão da linguagem Java que implementa explicitamente o modelo RTR, integrando a capacidade temporal do modelo RTR com as facilidades convencionais de Java. A potencialidade e a expressividade da abordagem proposta são demonstradas através de diversos exemplos envolvendo diferentes situações típicas de tempo real, incluindo a representação da sincronização ern aplicaçes multimídia. Além disso, uma extensão do modelo RTR para ambientes distribuídos abertos é descrita e exemplificada. Adicionalmcnte, esta tese também apresenta um estudo abrangente sobre modelos e linguagens tempo real baseados em objetos e/ou reflexão computacional existentes

Construction and Evaluation of Gas Feed-in System, Electrodes and Gas Exhaustion System applied to Low Pressure Plasma Coating Processes

Plasma polymerization is a technique used to deposit functional thin film coatings (nanometer until some micrometer thickness) on different materials surface. The thin film coating is deposited directly from a partially ionized precursor gas subjected to the effect of the plasma onto the surface of the substrate, which is placed in a low-pressure plasma chamber. This coating process regarding the achievement of the desired properties is in general well developed. The challenge is based on the scaling up process in respect to a large volume coater. Concerning this aspect only very few and rough information are available for constructors in respect to lay out of low-pressure plasma coater with the aim to achieve homogeneous coating deposition rate as well as homogeneous coating properties over all the products surfaces in contact with the plasma. The aim of the present research work is mainly to investigate the potential of guiding the gas flow inside a large volume plasma polymerization-system and to investigate how this gas guiding directly influences the coating homogeneity as well as the coating properties. Thereby the creation of construction guidelines to support future developments under the frame of low-pressure plasma technology is part of the task. To achieve this purpose, gas feed-in system, gas exhaustion system and electrode geometry were investigated. Taking into consideration that experimentally the local gas flow behavior cannot be directly measured inside a PECVD system computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were carried out using the commercial software Ansys Fluent 16.0A to investigate the gas flow behavior. Additionally, to get more knowledge about the electric field created by the RF-electrode in combination with the powered electrode, electrostatic simulations were done using the commercial software Ansys Maxwell 16.0A . Gas flow simulations showed clearly that the gas exhaustion system influences the local gas flow much more (in intensity and range) in comparison to the gas feed-in system. In this regard, a perforated polymeric plate was developed to reduce the influence of the gas exhaustion system and it was named under the frame of this work as a Baffle Platea . Coating experiments exhibited a clear improvement in the coating deposition homogeneity due to the installation of the Baffle Plate. The construction guidelines for gas feed-in systems and gas exhaustion systems were defined using gas flow simulations. To evaluate the simulation results, a non-uniformity coefficient was defined to define a construction border. For this work, the construction border was established at non-uniformity coefficient equals 5%. It means that construction layout which leads to non-uniformity coefficient higher than 5% will be not recommended for this application. From the analyzed parameters of the gas feed-in system, the pipe section area was the most relevant influencing the homogeneity of gas distribution. Regarding the gas exhaustion system, the simulation results showed that the distance between the Baffle Plate and the top of the chamber has a huge influence in the homogeneity of the gas exhaustion. Coating experiments were performed to correlate the distribution of the coating deposition rate in addition to the coating properties with the local gas velocity and the local electric field. Therefore, the construction guidelines must be supplemented with hints how to handle the influence of the walls (chamber, electrodes and product holder systems). The selected construction guidelines revealed to be useful for the development and construction of a new low-pressure plasma chamber of about 3 mA . Following the knowledge acquired from this research work the realized coating showed on an area of 2 mA a standard deviation of the deposition rate less than 17%. With this it had been demonstrated, that especially for large volume PECVD-systems following the rules of the construction guidelines is essential

Language-Mixing in Discourse in Bilingual Individuals with Non-Fluent Aphasia

Language-mixing (LM) as defined by Chengappa (2009, p. 417) is an “intra-sentential phenomenon referred to as the mixing of various linguistic units (morphemes, words, modifiers, phrases, etc.), primarily from two participating grammatical systems”. LM is influenced by grammatical, environmental, and social constraints (e.g., Milroy & Wei, 1995; Bhat & Chengappa, 2005). Researchers have suggested that LM in patients with aphasia is a communicative strategy used to achieve successful exchanges between speakers; the effectiveness of this mixing, however, had yet to be demonstrated quantitatively. In the current study we investigated whether LM is present in bilingual speakers with aphasia, and if so, at which linguistic level(s) (morphological, lexical, pragmatic, and phrase) LM is found. Once these questions were addressed, we asked whether the LM patterns were typical or atypical in nature in such individuals. Finally, we investigated the differences in pertinent discourse measures (productivity, dysfluencies, coherence, and communicative success) in bilingual speakers with and without aphasia in order to assess if LM truly helps them to produce a more successful form of communication. A total of 64 individuals – one group of 32 bilingual individuals with non-fluent aphasia and another group of 32 bilingual healthy control participants were recruited from local hospitals in Mysore, India. The study made use of two types of discourse elicitation tasks: personal narratives and picture description. Healthy control and aphasia participant groups were encouraged to mix languages in one condition. Their performance in this condition was compared to when they were constrained from mixing in Kannada-only and English-only conditions. Investigating brain damaged and non-brain damaged bilingual speakers from the same speech community allowed for the interpretation of typical and atypical patterns of language usage. The LM patterns that were similar in both groups, hence typical in nature were direction of LM, LM at various levels, LM frequency across tasks, and LM in different word classes. We observed four atypical patterns of language-mixing in individuals with aphasia: 1) they produced a higher percentage of mixing compared to the healthy control participants; 2) they produced a higher percentage of mixing in the Kannada-only condition than the English-only condition, i.e., they did not follow the instructions provided by the examiner during the Kannada-only condition; 3) they produced Kannada matrix language utterances in the English-only condition, which is atypical in the local Kannada-English speaking community; and 4) they produced more word-level mixing during Kannada-only and language-mixed condition than the English-only condition. It is common practice for clinicians and researchers to promote the usage of two or more languages, as they believe it enhances communication (e.g., Muñoz et al., 1999; Chengappa, et al., 2004). However, in the current study, we found that the ability to use more than one language did not lead to a more successful form of communication. We found that individuals with aphasia produced more morphemes, words, phrases, and utterances when they mixed languages, but they did not score higher on the communicative success and coherence scales compared to when they were constrained from mixing

Negotiating Gender and Bureaucracy: Female Managers in Indonesia's Ministry of Finance

There is global recognition of the need for more women in decision-making positions within bureaucracies to ensure gender-equitable policies and outcomes. Article 7 of the Convention of the Elimination of the Discrimination against Women commits states to ensure equality between women and men in political and public life, including participation in formulating government policy. In Indonesian government agencies, women now are employed in almost equal numbers to men. This thesis considers whether these changes represent genuine empowerment for these women, focussing on the gendered processes within the Ministry of Finance (MOF). There is a small but growing literature on female managers in developing country government agencies. However, no studies systematically combine an analysis of gendered processes within these organisations with an exploration of women’s work/family balance. This thesis develops such a combined approach. It draws on a range of data sources including interviews with 121 MOF employees, personal observation and documents. The analysis compares gendered practice within three different ministerial departments. Drawing on Goetz’s concept of the “gendered archaeology of organisation”, this thesis reveals a high degree of gender inequality in the daily practices. This includes overt discrimination in recruitment, as well as more indirect forms of discrimination in promotion and training. The thesis considers how employment in the MOF shapes the identities of female managers, and how these women balance their domestic lives with their careers. Among other things, this considers the effects of corruption, Islamic conservatism, Javanese culture, a bureaucratic reform programme and a gender mainstreaming initiative. The thesis observes how these women exercise agency within and outside the MOF, and the extent to which their education and professional status empower them in their working lives. The thesis also examines how gendered processes within the MOF affect its external policies

Seventh Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 1993), volume 1

This document contains papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications and Research Symposium (SOAR) Symposium hosted by NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC) on August 3-5, 1993, and held at JSC Gilruth Recreation Center. SOAR included NASA and USAF programmatic overview, plenary session, panel discussions, panel sessions, and exhibits. It invited technical papers in support of U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Department of Energy, NASA, and USAF programs in the following areas: robotics and telepresence, automation and intelligent systems, human factors, life support, and space maintenance and servicing. SOAR was concerned with Government-sponsored research and development relevant to aerospace operations. More than 100 technical papers, 17 exhibits, a plenary session, several panel discussions, and several keynote speeches were included in SOAR '93