This paper is a reflection on the power of archives in driving research. Just as much as informants draw the attention of researchrers to social patterns, archives do, too. Both archival and ethnographic research depends on the authority of written documents like field notes and official papers-- even in the sociology of art. Archives consist mainly of papers about objects and property. I argue that the material turn in my work and the study of logistics as a form of power became important to me because of my archival experience. Sociologists recognize the importance of property as a driver of social relations of power, but they rarely study logistical power. I do, but only because the archives demonstrated its importance.

Internet computing has been enabled by a mobile program execution model in which architecture-independent programs transfer to where they will be executed. The Java language model is designed to implement mobile execution by transferring bytecodes to a virtual machine which translates them into native machine instructions and then executes them on the target site. Implementing Java's mobile execution model efficiently has proved challenging for two reasons. First, the time required to transfer program code from the place where it is stored to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that will execute it is perceived by the program's user as execution delay. Current levels of deliverable Internet performance can cause this delay to be substantial. Second, once the code has arrived it must either be interpreted or compiled ``just-in-time'' for its execution. Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation offers improved execution speed over interpretation by exploiting the opportunity for compile-time optimizations, but the compilation time is also perceived by the program's user as execution delay. In this thesis, we define load delay as the unification of these two sources of overhead: transfer delay and compilation delay. We detail the causes of, describe the existing technology that contributes to, and show the degree to which load delay degrades performance of Internet-computing applications. We show that solutions to the problem of load delay in these mobile programs can be attacked in one of two ways regardless of the source: through avoidance and overlap. Avoidance is achieved by eliminating all or part of the cause of load delay and overlap by performing useful work concurrently with the delay. Both have the potential to reduce the effect of load delay and to improve performance of mobile programs. We present numerous solutions to load delay that implement either avoidance, overlap, or both. Our results show that both sources of load delay can be reduced substantially given currently available remote execution technology. In addition, our results suggest modifications that can be made to existing technology to further improve performance of Internet-computing applications.

Pre-2018 CSE ID: CS2001-0672

Clinical reasoning is the complex cognitive analysis employed by physicians during the medical decision making process. This is first introduced in the problem-based learning (PBL) course in the preclinical medical school curriculum with the PBL facilitator playing a critical role in meeting these educational goals. However, factors, such as the instructor's clinical experience and teaching style, will have an impact the group's engagement in the clinical reasoning process. Thus, the clinical reasoning tool was developed to address this variability, with the goal of strengthening small group engagement in clinical reasoning during PBL. The clinical reasoning tool (CRT) is an online educational application, which provides a framework for the process of developing and analyzing the differential diagnosis for a clinical case. It was assigned as a self-directed learning assignment to one student per small group for selected second-year PBL cases during one academic quarter. There was a >70% CRT implementation rate across the seven selected cases with a total of 86 CRT look-ups produced. Overall, students felt the tool provided a useful framework for developing and analyzing a clinical case, however 68% were dissatisfied with the tool, citing concerns about suboptimal implementation and tool functionality, and only 18% felt it offered educational value. In contrast, 57% of faculty facilitators found the CRT to be a useful educational resource, though in need of a modified implementation approach. The CRT has the potential to serve as a valuable educational tool. However, its role within the medical school curriculum must be optimized. Consequently, there are several areas for improvement and innovation in the CRT, including tool design, curricular implementation, and educational outcomes evaluation. Overall, this project allowed educators to explore new teaching modalities at the level of undergraduate medical education.

The effects of motivation and the depletion of cognitive resources on performance in a sustained attention task were investigated. 17 participants completed a modified version of the continuous temporal expectancy task (CTET; O’Connell et al., 2009). Performance on the CTET is a measure of sustained attention. Monetary reward was introduced as a between-subjects manipulation. Overall performance and performance across time served as behavioural measures of general sustained attention and the vigilance decrement, respectively. An electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to measure the neural correlates of behaviour, in particular, the alpha band oscillation. EEG analysis revealed higher alpha power for pre-target misses compared to hits, indicating a phase-dependent influence on sustained attention influenced by motivation levels. The vigilance decrement occurred in both reward and no reward groups, unaffected by rewards alone. Ceiling effects may have weakened the impact of rewards. Task performance variability suggests the need for a larger sample size to enhance reliability. In conclusion, alpha power differences between misses and hits suggest its role in sustained attention. However, reward did not mitigate the vigilance decrement which persisted across groups. Further research with a larger sample size is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of these effects.

Continued technology scaling has enabled the tremendous growth that semi-conductor industry has witnessed in last half century. However, as the technology scales in into the deep submicron era, variability in device parameters and operating conditions is emerging as a major threat to this continued growth. In the face of increasing variability, traditional design approaches that use typical or worst case values can lead to yield loss or increased cost and time to market, causing significant revenue loss in either case. State-of-the-art system-level analysis and design methodologies do not take the impact of variability into account and hence it is natural to question their effectiveness in the presence of variability. We believe that it is imperative that the impact of variability be considered during system level design. Analysis and design techniques that are cognizant of variability can help provide designers valuable feed- back about the impact of variations early on in the design cycle and hence, facilitate better design decisions at the system-level while preventing expensive design re-spins. The specific contributions on this thesis include: (i) system-level variability-aware power analysis methodology while considering the impact of manufacturing-induced variations in effective channel length and operation- induced variations in on-chip temperature, (ii) variation- aware system-level shutdown based power management techniques, (iii) variability-aware voltage level selection to improve the number of chips meeting power and performance targets, and (iv) a methodology for system- level performance analysis under variability, and various architecture level and application level techniques to enable performance recovery in systems affected by variations. Experiments conducted on various Systems-on- chip designs demonstrate that variation-aware design techniques enable significant improvements in overall energy dissipation and performance characteristics. In particular, the resulting distributions are more favorable in terms of reducing the revenue loss due to variations. We believe that the approaches outlined in this thesis are useful with the existing design show with the current technologies as well as in future systems by facilitating research and development in variation-aware application- level and architecture level techniques

Tacit knowledge is knowledge of practices or a logic of action whose inarticulacy allows it both to be taken for granted and to escape discursive constraints. Since Pierre Bourdieu treats the habitus as a taken for granted set of predispositions and logics of practice, we can understand it better by learning more about tacit knowledge. To that end, I will describe Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, and employ Deleuze on repetition and "figured world theory" on imagination in learning to expand our understanding of tacit knowledge and its inarticulacy. I will illustrate how tacit knowledge works with a close reading of a 17th-century book for stonemasons which teaches a new practice of construction for realizing classically-inspired architecture as it became fashionable. Using pictures rather than words, the book presents a way to imagine stones and arches as plastic and flexible, illustrating the strong connection between tacit knowledge to cultural imaginaries. Applying this understanding of tacit knowledge to the habitus reveals this inarticulate cultural domain to be not simply amechanical tool of social reproduction, but a malleable formation of collective imagination, a trickster that can shape logics of practice outside discursive common sense.