Feasibility study for a numerical aerodynamic simulation facility. Volume 1

A Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Facility (NASF) was designed for the simulation of fluid flow around three-dimensional bodies, both in wind tunnel environments and in free space. The application of numerical simulation to this field of endeavor promised to yield economies in aerodynamic and aircraft body designs. A model for a NASF/FMP (Flow Model Processor) ensemble using a possible approach to meeting NASF goals is presented. The computer hardware and software are presented, along with the entire design and performance analysis and evaluation

A VLSI architecture for enhancing software reliability

As a solution to the software crisis, we propose an architecture that supports and encourages the use of programming techniques and mechanisms for enhancing software reliability. The proposed architecture provides efficient mechanisms for detecting a wide variety of run-time errors, for supporting data abstraction, module-based programming and encourages the use of small protection domains through a highly efficient capability mechanism. The proposed architecture also provides efficient support for user-specified exception handlers and both event-driven and trace-driven debugging mechanisms. The shortcomings of the existing capability-based architectures that were designed with a similar goal in mind are examined critically to identify their problems with regard to capability translation, domain switching, storage management, data abstraction and interprocess communication. Assuming realistic VLSI implementation constraints, an instruction set for the proposed architecture is designed. Performance estimates of the proposed system are then made from the microprograms corresponding to these instructions based on observed characteristics of similar systems and language usage. A comparison of the proposed architecture with similar ones, both in terms of functional characteristics and low-level performance indicates the proposed design to be superior

Supporting multimedia user interface design using mental models and representational expressiveness

This thesis addresses the problem of output media allocation in the design of multimedia user interfaces. The literature survey identifies a formal definition of the representational capabilities of different media.as important in this task. Equally important, though less prominent in the literature, is that the correct mental model of a domain is paramount for the successful completion of tasks. The thesis proposes an original linguistic and cognitive based descriptive framework, in two parts. The first part defines expressiveness, the amount of representational abstraction a medium provides over any domain. The second part describes how this expressiveness is linked to the mental models that media induce, and how this in turn affects task performance. It is postulated that the mental models induced by different media, will reflect the abstractive representation those media offer over the task domain. This must then be matched to the abstraction required by tasks to allow them to be effectively accomplished. A 34 subject experiment compares five media, of two levels of expressiveness, over a range of tasks, in a complex and dynamic domain. The results indicate that expressiveness may allow media to be matched more closely to tasks, if the mental models they are known to induce are considered. Finally, the thesis proposes a tentative framework for media allocation, and two example interfaces are designed using this framework. This framework is based on the matching of expressiveness to the abstraction of a domain required by tasks. The need for the methodology to take account of the user's cognitive capabilities is stressed, and the experimental results are seen as the beginning of this procedure

Setting Attorneys\u27 Fees in Securities Class Actions: An Empirical As

n 1995, Congress overrode President Bill Clinton\u27s veto and enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act ( PSLRA ), a key purpose of which was to put securities class actions under the control of institutional investors with large financial stakes in the outcome of the litigation.\u27 The theory behind this policy, set out in a famous article by Professors Elliot Weiss and John Beckerman, was simple: self-interest should encourage investors with large stakes to run class actions in ways that maximize recoveries for all investors. These investors should naturally want to hire good lawyers, incentivize them properly, monitor their actions, and reject cheap settlements. In other words, control by large investors should reduce agency costs, which can be severe when securities class actions are run by lawyers who may be essentially unsupervised because their clients\u27 stakes are small. This reduced risk of opportunism should alleviate the need for judges to police the conduct of class counsel as well. By giving large investors control of securities-fraud class actions, the PSLRA expresses greater confidence in private arrangements than in judicial regulation, which failed to protect investors sufficiently in the past. Initially, Congress\u27s confidence in private arrangements seemed misplaced because institutional investors rarely volunteered to serve as lead plaintiffs. The statute created no incentives motivating them to serve, so they remained on the sidelines as they had before

Regulatory Litigation in the European Union: Does the U.S. Class Action Have a New Analogue?

This article is the first to consider the European resolution from a regulatory perspective, using a combination of new governance theory and equivalence functionalism to determine whether the European Union has adopted or is in the process of adopting a form of regulatory litigation. In so doing, the article considers a number of issues, including the basic definition of regulatory litigation, how class and collective relief can act as a regulatory mechanism and the special problems that arise when regulatory litigation is used in the transnational context. The article also includes a normative element, providing a number of suggestions on how European authorities – who are still in the early stages of drafting the relevant procedures – can better achieve the regulatory and other objectives set forth in the resolution. Through these means, the article makes a significant contribution not only to the domestic understanding of regulatory law, but also to the increasingly important field of transnational regulation. Audiences in both the United States and the European Union, as well as readers from other countries, can benefit greatly from this analysis

E-Discovery\u27s Threat to Civil Litigation: Reevaluating Rule 26 for the Digital Age

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, even though they were amended in 2006 specifically to address the costs and scale of ediscovery, not only fail to contain the cost or scope of discovery, but, in fact, encourage expensive litigation ancillary to the merits of civil litigants\u27 cases. This Article proposes that the solution to this dilemma is to eliminate the presumption that the producing party should pay for the cost of discovery. This rule should be abandoned in favor of a rule that would equally distribute the costs of discovery between the requesting and producing parties