Core component choices in single-user computer systems : a home office user\u27s perspective

The home office is a rapidly growing segment of the business environment. The trend toward two-income families and concerns over quality of life have made the office at home increasingly attractive alternative business style. The evolution of technology during the past ten years has opened up a broad array of choices. The introduction of the IBM personal computer in the fall of 1981 provided the technological nucleus. Other office products aimed at the individual user such as personal copiers, facsimile machines, smart typewriters, and multi-function telecommunications products have grown around it. The evolution of personal computer technology has been accelerating since its introduction; the home office user has a broad and confusing array of choices at varying levels of technological development and intercompatibility

System Design for a Multi-user Micro-processor Based Application

Computer Scienc

The Structure and Dynamics of Schools and Business: Do They Face Similar Issues?

The main aims of the report are to: (1) gain a better understanding of key economic forces shaping choices available to schools; (2) build up our practical knowledge of how other organisations deal with the kinds of issues facing schools; and (3) bridge the gap between the view that economics has nothing useful to say about how to organise education and the view that education is just another business and should be treated as such. The report draws on analogies from the business world to highlight parallels between the operating environment facing schools and businesses. It also identifies some important features of schooling which do not have a strong parallel in the business world, which suggests care needs to be taken not to draw too much from any individual example.

Individual Preferences In The Use Of Automation

As system automation increases and evolves, the intervention of the supervising operator becomes ever less frequent but ever more crucial. The adaptive automation approach is one in which control of tasks dynamically shifts between humans and machines, being an alternative to traditional static allocation in which task control is assigned during system design and subsequently remains unchanged during operations. It is proposed that adaptive allocation should adjust to the individual operators\u27 characteristics in order to improve performance, avoid errors, and enhance safety. The roles of three individual difference variables relevant to adaptive automation are described: attentional control, desirability of control, and trait anxiety. It was hypothesized that these traits contribute to the level of performance for target detection tasks for different levels of difficulty as well as preferences for different levels of automation. The operators\u27 level of attentional control was inversely proportional to automation level preferences, although few objective performance changes were observed. The effects of sensory modality were also assessed, and auditory signal detection was superior to visual signal detection. As a result, the following implications have been proposed: operators generally preferred either low or high automation while neglecting the intermediary level; preferences and needs for automation may not be congruent; and there may be a conservative response bias associated with high attentional control, notably in the auditory modality

Essays in climate finance

This thesis investigates the behaviour of firms in relation to \emph{climate-transition} events, so-called events that occur as part of the transition to a green economy to prevent climate change. The first chapter looks at the current development of the sustainable finance market to study how green securities should be optimally designed and whether measurement and information frictions can explain observed cross-sectional issuance patterns. The second chapter exploits a climate regulatory announcement to study how firms' beliefs about climate regulation affect their emissions abatement plans and how they interact with cross-firm reputation externalities. The third chapter makes use of an environmental policy implemented in the United Kingdom to study the cost-effectiveness of carbon pricing policies subject to carbon leakage risk and asymmetric information.Open Acces

Understanding the Effect of Cognitive Reference Frames on Unmanned Aircraft Operations

As an ever-greater share of our national military airborne resources transition from manned to unmanned aircraft (UA) the issues associated with unmanned aircraft operations become more and more important. This study seeks to understand the difficulties associated with controlling both the unmanned aircraft and an onboard video sensor. Traditional unmanned aircraft involve multiple operators controlling multiple control displays that are often oriented on misaligned reference frames. One example unmanned aircraft mission includes a target described on a north-up reference frame, such as a map. The pilot plans a flight path, to this target, on a north-up map, but controls the aircraft along that flight path using an aircraft-view reference frame that offers a forward-looking cockpit view. Finally, the sensor operator controls the sensor to point at the target area using a sensor-view reference frame that offers a sensor viewfinder perspective. Any unmanned aircraft operator or team of operators is required to manage tasks across these multiple reference frames (north-up, aircraft-view, and sensor-view). This study investigated several display design techniques that had the potential to reduce the cognitive burden associated with correlating information from multiple reference frames. Orientation aids, reference frame alignment, display integration, and reduced display redundancy were all evaluated with human subject simulator experiments. During four separate experiments, a total of 80 subjects were asked to complete a series of representative unmanned aircraft operational tasks involving target acquisition, imagery orientation, target tracking, and flight path control. A simulator was developed to support this effort and allow for modification of display characteristics. Over all four experiments the reference frame alignment technique reduced basic orientation time and improved target acquisition time along with other performance and workload measures. The currently accepted practice of placing an orientation aid, such as a north arrow, on the displayed sensor video was only significant on the basic imagery orientation task and did not have a significant impact on the more involved target acquisition task. This research introduced a potential benefit of reference frame alignment on unmanned aircraft operations.This material is based upon work supported by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office under Air Force Contract No. FA8721-05-C-0002. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the US Government

Ontologies in Cloud Computing - Review and Future Directions

Cloud computing as a technology has the capacity to enhance cooperation, scalability, accessibility, and offers discount prospects using improved and effective computing, and this capability helps organizations to stay focused. Ontologies are used to model knowledge. Once knowledge is modeled, knowledge management systems can be used to search, match, visualize knowledge, and also infer new knowledge. Ontologies use semantic analysis to define information within an environment with interconnecting relationships between heterogeneous sets. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the existing literature on ontology in cloud computing and defines the state of the art. We applied the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and identified 400 articles; 58 of the articles were selected after further selection based on set selection criteria, and 35 articles were considered relevant to the study. The study shows that four predominant areas of cloud computing—cloud security, cloud interoperability, cloud resources and service description, and cloud services discovery and selection—have attracted the attention of researchers as dominant areas where cloud ontologies have made great impact. The proposed methods in the literature applied 30 ontologies in the cloud domain, and five of the methods are still practiced in the legacy computing environment. From the analysis, it was found that several challenges exist, including those related to the application of ontologies to enhance business operations in the cloud and multi-cloud. Based on this review, the study summarizes some unresolved challenges and possible future directions for cloud ontology researchers.publishedVersio

Pedestrian Dynamics: Modeling and Analyzing Cognitive Processes and Traffic Flows to Evaluate Facility Service Level

Walking is the oldest and foremost mode of transportation through history and the prevalence of walking has increased. Effective pedestrian model is crucial to evaluate pedestrian facility service level and to enhance pedestrian safety, performance, and satisfaction. The objectives of this study were to: (1) validate the efficacy of utilizing queueing network model, which predicts cognitive information processing time and task performance; (2) develop a generalized queueing network based cognitive information processing model that can be utilized and applied to construct pedestrian cognitive structure and estimate the reaction time with the first moment of service time distribution; (3) investigate pedestrian behavior through naturalistic and experimental observations to analyze the effects of environment settings and psychological factors in pedestrians; and (4) develop pedestrian level of service (LOS) metrics that are quick and practical to identify improvement points in pedestrian facility design. Two empirical and two analytical studies were conducted to address the research objectives. The first study investigated the efficacy of utilizing queueing network in modeling and predicting the cognitive information processing time. Motion capture system was utilized to collect detailed pedestrian movement. The predicted reaction time using queueing network was compared with the results from the empirical study to validate the performance of the model. No significant difference between model and empirical results was found with respect to mean reaction time. The second study endeavored to develop a generalized queueing network system so the task can be modeled with the approximated queueing network and its first moment of any service time distribution. There was no significant difference between empirical study results and the proposed model with respect to mean reaction time. Third study investigated methods to quantify pedestrian traffic behavior, and analyze physical and cognitive behavior from the real-world observation and field experiment. Footage from indoor and outdoor corridor was used to quantify pedestrian behavior. Effects of environmental setting and/or psychological factor on travel performance were tested. Finally, adhoc and tailor-made LOS metrics were presented for simple realistic service level assessments. The proposed methodologies were composed of space revision LOS, delay-based LOS, preferred walking speed-based LOS, and ‘blocking probability’

Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge: Team Soulenoid Cycle

The National Fluid Power Association is a trade association that unifies customers and manufacturers within the hydraulics industry. Extending their partnership to universities, the annual Fluid Powered Vehicle Competition challenges college teams to design, build, and test a fluid-powered vehicle with the goal of educating students about the hydraulics industry and building career connections. Soulenoid Cycle produced the next iteration of Cal Poly’s fluid powered vehicle for the 2021 competition. This report summarizes research, ideation, component selection, initial and final design, manufacturing, and competition results conducted by Soulenoid Cycle. Relevant research includes successful current and past vehicles, the operation of a hydraulic propulsion system, and popular controller and sensor choices for hydraulic systems. Based on the requirements of the competition, performance of competitors, and guidance from a previous Cal Poly team, Soulenoid Cycle identified three major areas of improvement for this year’s competing vehicle: sprint time, hydraulic efficiency, and mechatronics. Development of the goals and objectives discussed in this report were critical to the success of this project. By solidifying a foundation of preliminary research, defining the scope of work, and making initial design and component selections, Soulenoid Cycle was successful when approaching final vehicle design and manufacturing, and the 2021 Fluid Powered Vehicle Competition