Dissertations / Theses on the topic '62L10'

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions d'abord le problème de l'optimisation d'ordre zéro dans le cadre actif pour des fonctions lisses et trois classes différentes de fonctions : i) les fonctions qui satisfont la condition de Polyak-Łojasiewicz, ii) les fonctions fortement convexes, et iii) la classe plus large des fonctions non convexes fortement lisses.De plus, nous proposons un nouvel algorithme basé sur la randomisation de type l1, et nous étudions ses propriétés pour les fonctions convexes Lipschitz dans un cadre d'optimisation en ligne. Notre analyse est due à la dérivation d'une nouvelle inégalité de type Poincar'e pour la mesure uniforme sur la sphère l1 avec des constantes explicites.Ensuite, nous étudions le problème d'optimisation d'ordre zéro dans les schémas passifs. Nous proposons une nouvelle méthode pour estimer le minimiseur et la valeur minimale d'une fonction de régression lisse et fortement convexe f. Nous dérivons des limites supérieures pour cet algorithme et prouvons des limites inférieures minimax pour un tel cadre.Enfin, nous étudions le problème du bandit contextuel linéaire sous contraintes d'équité où un agent doit sélectionner un candidat dans un pool, et où chaque candidat appartient à un groupe sensible. Nous proposons une nouvelle notion d'équité qui est pratique dans l'exemple susmentionné. Nous concevons une politique avide qui calcule une estimation du rang relatif de chaque candidat en utilisant la fonction de distribution cumulative empirique, et nous prouvons sa propriété optimale
In this thesis, we first study the problem of zero-order optimization in the active setting for smooth and three different classes of functions: i) the functions that satisfy the Polyak-Łojasiewicz condition, ii) strongly convex functions, and iii) the larger class of highly smooth non-convex functions.Furthermore, we propose a novel algorithm that is based on l1-type randomization, and we study its properties for Lipschitz convex functions in an online optimization setting. Our analysis is due to deriving a new Poincar'e type inequality for the uniform measure on the l1-sphere with explicit constants.Then, we study the zero-order optimization problem in the passive schemes. We propose a new method for estimating the minimizer and the minimum value of a smooth and strongly convex regression function f. We derive upper bounds for this algorithm and prove minimax lower bounds for such a setting.In the end, we study the linear contextual bandit problem under fairness constraints where an agent has to select one candidate from a pool, and each candidate belongs to a sensitive group. We propose a novel notion of fairness which is practical in the aforementioned example. We design a greedy policy that computes an estimate of the relative rank of each candidate using the empirical cumulative distribution function, and we proved its optimal property

Almshouses providing accommodation for poor people are a common feature of the towns and villages of England, but in the historical literature are rarely considered to have made a genuine contribution to the poor and needy. This study examines the extent and nature of almshouse provision in early modern England, and places this within the context of overall approaches to the poor in the period. The archival research focuses on the contrasting counties of Durham, Warwickshire and Kent between about 1550 and 1725. Information on all the almshouse foundations in those areas is collated and summarised in an appendix, enabling both quantitative and qualitative evaluations to be made. A detailed analysis of the policy background to housing the poor provides the context for the study, and reveals that almshouses were initially seen as part of a national as well as local solution to the problem of poverty. Many of the diverse people involved in founding and running almshouses responded to this agenda, motivated by political responsibility and particular group identities, rather than just the desire for personal memorialisation. A case study of a single almshouse exemplifies the way this parish used the almshouse alongside other resources to meet the needs of the poor. Overall, there was a surprising variation in the socio-economic status of almshouse occupants and their experience of almshouse life. In many almshouses, occupants’ standard of living was similar to that of other poor people, including parish paupers. The guaranteed nature of the benefits and security of the accommodation were, however, distinct advantages, and most almspeople were able to enjoy considerable independence and autonomy, with women possibly benefiting most. Over the period, however, statutory poor relief and the introduction of workhouses enabled almshouses to develop as more exclusive institutions, which were less embedded in local welfare systems.

Background Virtual patients (VPs) are computerised online representations of realistic clinical cases. Recent technology and software advances position VPs as a standardised, accessible, collaborative teaching tool. We do not know how they should be designed. My research question is: how do different VP design principles influence student experiences when completing VPs? The aim of this study is to provide qualitative and quantitative research evidence to support VP design and development. Methods This research project uses qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate how VP design influences medical student learning, based on groups of students from three UK medical schools (Warwick, Birmingham, Keele). The initial qualitative research component is a grounded theory (GT) focus group study evaluating VP design properties. The literature review and qualitative research identified the two most important VP properties to research were: (1) branching within the cases; and (2) structured clinical reasoning instruction (SR) intended to promote good clinical decision making in the VPs. The quantitative research component is a multi-centre randomised experimental 2x2 factorial study of undergraduate students at three UK medical schools, conducted to a published protocol. I investigate two most important independent VP design variables: (1) branching, present or absent; (2) SR, present or absent. Outcomes including: (a) VP scores; (b) VP student evaluations; (c) metrics collected from the VP environment; (d) student self-reported case preferences and (e) summative assessment results. The study has institution ethics approval. Results In the qualitative study of six focus groups (n=46), I produced a model describing how VP design influences learning. In the quantitative research, 572 students completed 1773 VPs, and 1223 evaluations, with 296 (50.1%) students completing all four VPs (1184). Key findings were: student expressed preferred SR when present (70.5% of student, P<0.001); there were no significant differences in adjusted global VP scores or evaluation scores (all p>0.3 for the independent variables); institution factors played an important role with higher scores at one centre (p<0.001); and there were significant improvements in Bayesian reasoning with SR present (7% improvement, p<0.001). Discussion This original research is the first GT study into VPs. The quantitative component is the largest study to date in the literature exploring VP design variables. It provides practical lessons for authors and institutions for design and delivery of VPs. All VPs used are available as open education resources.

As global population expands, so does its demand for food. This will require vast amounts of plant-derived calories. This increased pressure means it is vital that we do more with less; less land, less water, less chemical input and less labour. One major threat to crop production is posed by plant pests and pathogens. In particular, filamentous plant pathogens – oomycetes and fungi – are among the most devastating organisms known to agriculture. With their rapidly evolving genomes which specialise in breaking plant immune systems and chemical control methods, control of these pathogens is becoming extremely problematic. Especially as they often encounter crops in monoculture. An often overlooked potential strategy for developing pathogen resistance is manipulation of the host targets of plant pathogen effector proteins. In order to manipulate such targets to condition enhanced resistance, one must first develop a sound understanding of the interaction between effector and target, the target’s function in planta and which processes are being perturbed by the interaction. A previously discovered interaction between a P. infestans RXLR effector and a host MAPK known to be a positive regulator of immunity, where the effector acts to perturb positive regulation of immunity, is used here to investigate the possibility of manipulating a host target for enhanced immunity. Effector-insensitive variants were produced and characterised, prior to expression in CRISPR-edited tomato plants. We tentatively suggest that at least one variant may condition enhanced resistance. Another interactor of the same effector protein was investigated for its role in immunity and evidence suggesting it may function as a helper of the effector is presented. Additionally, the expression, purification and crystallisation of native and heavy atom derivatives of a candidate effector protein from B. graminis f.sp. hordeii is demonstrated.

Errors within a Geographic Information System (GIS) arise from several factors. In the first instance receiving data from a variety of different sources results in a degree of incompatibility between such information. Secondly, the very processes used to acquire the information into the GIS may in fact degrade the quality of the data. If geometric overlay (the very raison d'etre of many GISs) is to be performed, such inconsistencies need to be carefully examined and dealt with. A variety of techniques exist for the user to eliminate such problems, but all of these tend to rely on the geometry of the information, rather than on its meaning or nature. This thesis explores the introduction of error into GISs and the consequences this has for any subsequent data analysis. Techniques for error removal at the overlay stage are also examined and improved solutions are offered. Furthermore, the thesis also looks at the role of the data model and the potential detrimental effects this can have, in forcing the data to be organised into a pre-defined structure.

Most users find it difficult to remember traditional text-based passwords. In order to cope with multiple passwords, users tend to adopt unsafe mechanisms like writing down the passwords or sharing them with others. Recognition-based graphical authentication systems (RBGSs) have been proposed as one potential solution to minimize the above problems. But, most prior works in the field of RBGSs make the unrealistic assumption of studying a single password. It is also an untested assumption that RBGS passwords are resistant to being written down or verbally communicated. The main aim of the research reported in this thesis is to examine the memorability of multiple image passwords and their guessability using written descriptions (provided by the respective account holders). In this context, the thesis presents four user studies. The first user study (US1) examined the usability of multiple RBGS passwords with four different image types: Mikon, doodle, art and everyday objects (e.g. images of food, buildings, sports etc.). The results obtained in US1 demonstrated that subjects found it difficult to remember four RBGS passwords (of the same image type) and the memorability of the passwords deteriorated over time. The results of another usability study (US2) conducted using the same four image types (as in US1) demonstrated that the memorability of the multiple RBGS passwords created by employing a mnemonic strategy do not improve even when compared to the existing multiple password studies and US1. In the context of the guessability, a user study (GS1) examined the guessability of RBGS passwords (created in US1), using the textual descriptions given by the respective account holders. Another study (GS2) examined the guessability of RBGS passwords (created in US2), using descriptions given by the respective account holders. The results obtained from both the studies showed that RBGS passwords can be guessed using the password descriptions in the experimental set-up used. Additionally, this thesis presents a novel Passhint authentication system (PHAS).The results of a usability study (US3) demonstrated that the memorability of multiple PHAS passwords is better than in existing Graphical authentication systems (GASs). Although the registration time is high, authentication time for the successful attempts is either equivalent to or less than the time reported for previous GASs. The guessability study (GS3) showed that the art passwords are the least guessable, followed by Mikon, doodle and objects in that order. This thesis offers these initial studies as a proof of principle to conduct large scale field studies in the future with PHAS. Based on the review of the existing literature, this thesis identifies the need for a general set of principles to design usability experiments that would allow systematic evaluation and comparison of different authentication systems. From the empirical studies (US1, US2 and US3) reported in this thesis, we found that multiple RBGS passwords are difficult to remember, and the memorability of such passwords can be increased using the novel PHAS. We also recommend using the art images as the passwords in PHAS, because they are found to be the least guessable using the written descriptions in the empirical studies (GS1, GS2 and GS3) reported in this thesis.

La Diabetes mellitus es una enfermedad que afecta a todos los Individuos sin distinción alguna de edad, sexo ni nivel económico. Constituye la tercera causa de mortalidad a nivel mundial. En los últimos tiempos, producto del ritmo de la vida y diversos problemas se ha notado una reincidencia en la patología Diabetes en el servicio de clínica médica del Hospital Enfermeros Argentinos de General Alvear. Se toma para esta investigación una población de 40 personas diabéticas internadas en el servicio de clínica médica con una muestra de 20 pacientes reincidentes, desde el mes de Enero de 2013 hasta el mes de abril 2013. Los objetivos de este trabajo son: conocer las causas o factores por los que reinciden los pacientes con patologías diabéticas, definir si la educación es una buena estrategia para disminuir o anular la reincidencia y conocer el grado de escolaridad y los conocimientos previos del paciente sobre la enfermedad para utilizar vocabulario específico y adecuado.
Fil: Páez, Sergio. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Enfermería..
Fil: Valdés, Celeste. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Enfermería..
Fil: Velázquez, Daniel. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Escuela de Enfermería..

Tra i liposarcomi, il tumore lipomatoso atipico/liposarcoma ben differenziato e il liposarcoma dedifferenziato rappresentano i sottotipi più frequenti. Spesso è difficile distinguere questi tumori da altri con caratteristiche morfologiche simili. Da un punto di vista citogenetico sono caratterizzati dalla presenza di cromosomi soprannumerari giganti e cromosomi ad anello costituiti principalmente da sequenze amplificate della regione 12q13-15. In questa regione mappano numerosi geni tra cui il gene MDM2 (murine double minute-2). La caratterizzazione molecolare di tali sottotipi diventa estremamente importante sia a fini diagnostici sia per un corretto indirizzo terapeutico, soprattutto oggi, dopo l’introduzione nella pratica clinica di terapie biologiche mirate (targeted therapies). Nel presente studio viene analizzato il ruolo dell’analisi FISH per la valutazione dello status di MDM2 nelle neoplasie lipomatose e per stabilire se questo marcatore possa essere utilizzato nella diagnosi differenziale di questi tumori. Sebbene questo studio confermi l’utilità diagnostica dell’amplificazione di MDM2 nella diagnosi del tumore lipomatoso atipico/liposarcoma ben differenziato ed il liposarcoma dedifferenziato, questo marcatore potrebbe avere in futuro anche una più ampia applicazione. Data la recente introduzione degli inibitori selettivi di MDM2 tale ricerca risulta importante non solo a fini diagnostici ma anche per la selezione dei pazienti che potranno in futuro beneficiare del trattamento con tali inibitori. Questo studio è stato effettuato anche per analizzare la rilevanza biologica del percorso che vede coinvolto il gene AKT nel liposarcoma ben differenziato e dedifferenziato e per stabilire se questo percorso possa rappresentare un utile bersaglio terapeutico in questi tumori. I dati ottenuti dimostrano che AKT è espresso ed attivato in tutti i casi di tumore lipomatoso atipico/liposarcoma ben differenziato e liposarcoma dedifferenziato.
Among the liposarcomas, the atypical lipomatous tumor/well-differentiated liposarcoma and dedifferentiated liposarcoma subtypes are more frequent. It is often difficult to distinguish these from other tumors with similar morphological characteristics. The cytogenetic hallmark of these tumors is he presence of supernumerary chromosomes and giant ring chromosomes which consist mainly of amplified sequences of the region 12q13-15. In this region mapped several genes including the gene MDM2 ( murine double Minute-2). The molecular characterization of these subtypes becomes extremely important both for diagnostic purposes and for a correct therapeutic approach , especially today, after the introduction into clinical practice of targeted biological therapies (targeted therapies). In the present study is analyzed the role of FISH analysis for the evaluation of the MDM2 status in lipomatous neoplasms and to determine whether this marker could be used in the differential diagnosis of these tumors. Although this study confirms the diagnostic utility of MDM2 amplification in the diagnosis of atypical lipomatous tumor/well-differentiated liposarcoma and dedifferentiated liposarcoma, this marker could have in the future a wider application . Given the recent introduction of selective inhibitors of MDM2 such research is important not only for diagnostic purposes but also for the selection of patients who may in the future benefit from treatment with these inhibitors. This study was also performed to analyze the biological relevance of the pathway that involves the AKT gene in well-differentiated and dedifferentiated liposarcoma and to determine whether this pathway may represent a useful therapeutic target in these tumors . The data obtained demonstrate that AKT is expressed and activated in all cases of atypical lipomatous tumor/well differentiated liposarcoma and dedifferentiated liposarcoma .

Liu (1996) discussed a class of robust normal/independent distributions which contains a group of thick-tailed cases. In this article, we develop a skewed version of these distributions in the multivariate setting, and we call them multivariate skew normal/independent distributions. We derive several useful properties for them. The main virtue of the members of this family is that they are easy to simulate and lend themselves to an EM-type algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation. For two multivariate models of practical interest, the EM-type algorithm has been discussed with emphasis on the skew-t, the skew-slash, and the contaminated skew-normal distributions. Results obtained from simulated and two real data sets are also reported.
Liu (1996) discute una clase de distribuciones robustas a las que apela como normal/independiente, y que contiene un grupo de distribuciones de colas pesadas. En este artículo desarrollamos una versión asimétrica de tales distribuciones en un escenario multivariado, a las que llamaremos distruciones normales asimétricas independientes multivariadas. Para tales distribuciones derivamos algunas propiedades. La principal virtud de los miembros de esta familia es que son fáciles de simular y se prestan a un algoritmo de tipo EM para realizar estimaciones de máxima verosimilitud de sus parámetros. Para dos modelos multivariados de interés práctico se discute el algoritmo EM con énfasis en las distribuciones t-asimétrica, slash asimétrica y normal asimétrica contaminada. Los resultados obtenidos a partir de simulaciones y de dos conjuntos de datos reales son reportados.

Agriculture now covers over a third of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, and smallholder farmers alone manage over a billion hectares globally. As stewards of the land, smallholders do much more for human well-being than just harvest useful products. However, a conventionally narrow focus on productivity over the last half- century now threatens ecosystem health and long-term agricultural production, particularly as global climate change accelerates. Agroecological and ‘climate-smart’ agricultural (CSA) practices have been proposed to both mitigate climate change and build resilience by enhancing multiple ecosystem services (ES), and policies are emerging to incentivize the adoption of such practices. In order to (1) better understand how agroecological and CSA management alternatives impact multiple ES, and (2) contribute to operationalizing monitoring of ES in smallholder landscapes, I present research from El Salvador combining field methods and remote sensing analysis to evaluate multiple ES. Using data from on-farm field trials, I developed composite ES indices to demonstrate distinct benefits and synergies among multiple ES from agroforestry and, to a lesser extent, organic management (i.e., CSA) compared to conventional management. I also identified a subset of easy-to-measure field proxies that correlate well with multiple ES, and proposed an improved method to compare relative erosion resulting from different land management practices. At the landscape scale, I focused on emerging techniques to map aboveground woody biomass (AGWB) – a large terrestrial carbon sink and indicator of agroforestry management – using high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery and airborne laser scanning (ALS). I showed how satellite data could be used to quantify AGWB at the watershed to landscape scale with uncertainties of less than 5%, and suggest that a singular focus on plot-scale uncertainty limits the operationalization of satellite-based approaches to monitor AGWB. I also present a novel approach to using ALS that improves the accuracy of measuring AGWB in trees outside of forests (e.g., agroforestry, hedgerows) and apply it to show that these trees contain substantial AGWB within smallholder landscapes, further demonstrating the ES benefits of agroforestry. This dissertation contributes to designing simple and cost-effective monitoring strategies to help operationalize policies promoting management practices that enhance multiple ES in smallholder agriculture.
Land and Food Systems, Faculty of
Graduate

In the Canadian North, the fruits of berry producing species are a highly nutritious source of food available to both animals and humans. Although relatively well-documented in boreal and subarctic environments, little information on the ecology and cultural importance of berry species is available for the Arctic. This research aims to fill that gap using archives, interviews, ecological monitoring as well as remote sensing tools. An overview of the different uses and roles of berry plants and berry picking as reported in close to 200 interviews conducted with Elders and active land users across Inuit Nunangat since the 1980s was compiled. Through extensive fieldwork and remote sensing analyses, local availability and animal consumption of berries were investigated in detail in the vicinity of Arviat, Nunavut. Finally, an overall assessment of berry productivity in the Canadian North was conducted using berry productivity data collected between 2007 and 2015 at 10 sites from Nain, Nunatsiavut, and Kugluktuk, Nunavut, to Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. Results showed the extensive and intimate knowledge of berry plants throughout Inuit Nunangat; berries were and remain culturally and nutritionally important for Inuit. Detailed landscape analyses in Arviat, revealed the large number of berries produced and the relatively large amount consumed by animals, mainly geese. Nevertheless, animals only eat a marginal portion of the total production at the site. Perceived competition for the resource may be linked to the small number of productive and accessible patches in the vicinity of the community. The analysis of inter-annual and regional variations in berry productivity illustrated that the abundance of berries in the Arctic is comparable or greater to certain forested areas in North America and Fennoscandia. The most productive sites were located in the low Arctic, in dry-mesic sites dominated by semi-prostrate dwarf shrubs. Inter-annual productivity analyses showed the complex interaction of winter and spring precipitation as well as summer temperature on productivity. Overall, this research demonstrates the cultural and ecological importance of berry species across Inuit Nunangat and suggests ongoing impacts of community development, pollution and recent climate change on the quality and availability of this important resource.
Arts, Faculty of
Geography, Department of
Graduate

This thesis investigates the geometry of random spaces. Geodesics in random surfaces. The Brownian map, developed by Le Gall and Miermont, is a random metric space arising as the scaling limit of random planar maps. Its construction involves Aldous’ continuum random tree, the canonical random real tree, and Brownian motion, an almost surely continuous but nowhere differentiable path. As a result, the Brownian map is a non-differentiable surface with a fractal geometry that is much closer to that of a real tree than a smooth surface. A key feature, observed by Le Gall, is the confluence of geodesics phenomenon, which states that any two geodesics to a typical point coalesce before reaching the point. We show that, in fact, geodesics to anywhere near a typical point pass through a common confluence point. This leads to information about special points that had remained largely mysterious. Our main result is the almost everywhere continuity and uniform stability of the cut locus of the Brownian map. We also classify geodesic networks that are dense and find the Hausdorff dimension of the set of pairs that are joined by each type of network. Susceptibility of random graphs. Given a graph G=(V,E) and an initial set I of active vertices in V, the r-neighbour bootstrap percolation process, attributed to Chalupa, Leath and Reich, is a cellular automaton that evolves by activating vertices with at least r active neighbours. If all vertices in V are activated eventually, we say that I is contagious. A graph with a small contagious set is called susceptible. Bootstrap percolation has been analyzed on several deterministic graphs, such as grids, lattices and trees. More recent work studies the model on random graphs, such as the fundamental Erdős–Rényi graph G(n,p). We identify thresholds for the susceptibility of G(n,p), refining approximations by Feige, Krivelevich and Reichman. Along the way, we obtain large deviation estimates that complement central limit theorems of Janson, Łuczak, Turova and Vallier. We also study graph bootstrap percolation, a variation due to Bollobás. Our main result identifies the sharp threshold for K4-percolation, solving a problem of Balogh, Bollobás and Morris.
Science, Faculty of
Mathematics, Department of
Graduate

Nail-laminated timber-concrete composite (TCC) is a system composed of a nail-laminated timber (NLT) panel connected to a concrete slab through shear connections. When used as flexural elements such as floors, the concrete and NLT are located in the compression and tension zones, respectively. NLT panels, being constructed out of inexpensive lumber planks nailed on their sides, offer an economical advantage in mass-timber constructions that complement the structural and building physics advantages of TCC. However, the performance of nail-laminated TCC as well as efficient shear connectors for this system have not been investigated. This thesis presents the experimental study conducted on the performance of TCC panels constructed out of NLT, mechanical fasteners, and cast-in-place concrete. First, nine different sizes of truss-plates and two configurations of self-tapping screws installed in small-scale TCC specimens were tested under shear load. The connections’ strength and stiffness were determined to evaluate its performance as TCC shear connectors. Second, four truss-plate configurations were selected for implementation in full-scale TCC panels. Two panels for each shear connection systems were tested under impact loading and a quasi-static monotonic loading to determine the vibration bending properties, respectively. Panel specifications and layouts of the connectors were designed based on the established γ-method. The test results show that nail-laminated TCC panels reached slightly higher fundamental natural frequency and elastic bending stiffness than predicted. Furthermore, failure did not occur until loading reached 5 to 7 times the serviceability requirements. The selected truss-plates shear connection demonstrated to be an efficient solution for nail-laminated TCC panels.
Applied Science, Faculty of
Civil Engineering, Department of
Graduate

The purpose of this paper is to explore the place of the provinces in the Canada-United States relationship by looking at the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In order to understand the current Canada-US relationship, a brief overview of the history of the relationship will be presented as well as various ways to define the relationship. This paper seeks to explain the constitutional place of the provinces in this complex relationship. The Canadian economy relies on natural resources, a matter of provincial jurisdiction. The provinces feel this earns them a place at the negotiating table. This paper argues the provinces will not have a seat at the negotiating table with the federal government, as occurred during the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiations. The provinces are motivated to try and recreate a CETA-like negotiation environment, which would get each province to the negotiation table. The provinces want to lobby the US federal government to create this environment because the US has more power in the Canada-US trade relationship. The personal relationships various Premiers have created will help to increase their individual provincial bargaining positions. There have been varying levels of provincial involvement in preparing for NAFTA negotiations. In order for the Canadian government to present an image of unity to the US, the provinces will not have direct involvement but will instead be consulted. This paper will argue the level of provincial involvement during CETA was an isolated example. All ten provinces at the table, vying for their own self-interests at the expense of other provinces, would harm the country as a whole.
Arts, Faculty of
Political Science, Department of
Graduate

Theorists have noted that social rejection, uncertainty, error evaluation, regret, and cognitive dissonance all activate the same neural substrate as physical pain; specifically, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Furthermore, studies have shown that acetaminophen, a painkiller that is used to treat aches and pains, attenuates sensitivity to social pain, as well as uncertainty and dissonance. Together, these findings suggest that there is a relationship between physically and psychologically painful experiences. However, there is little evidence that various distinct sources of psychological distress increase sensitivity to physical pain, as we would expect given that they have a common neural basis. In study 1, I explored the hypothesis that psychological pain is physically painful by investigating purchases of over-the-counter painkillers. I found that Americans are more likely to purchase painkillers during uncertain times. In study 2, I investigated whether uncertainty leads to increased sensitivity to physical pain in a cold pressor task. Using this procedure, I was unable to find evidence that uncertainty increases sensitivity to physical pain. I suggest various alternative approaches to the study of pain and uncertainty. In study 3, I explored the relationship between physical pain and a new candidate for psychological pain: regret. I determined whether acetaminophen attenuates people’s experience of regret, a psychological experience that is conceptually similar to dissonance and error evaluation. I did not find evidence that acetaminophen attenuates people’s responses to regret. Therefore, I propose a number of future directions for the study of regret, uncertainty, and physical pain.
Arts, Faculty of
Psychology, Department of
Graduate

Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-121).
Online service providers (OSPs) such as Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon provide customized features that do not behave as conventional experience goods. Absent familiar metaphors, unraveling the full. scope and implications of attendant privacy hazards requires technical knowledge, creating information asymmetries for casual users. While a number of information asymmetries are proximately rooted in the substantive content of OSP privacy policies, the lack of countervailing standards guidelines can be traced to systemic failures on the part of privacy regulating institutions. In particular, the EU Data Protection Directive (EU-DPD) and the US Safe Harbor Agreement (US-SHA) are based on comprehensive norms, but do not provide pragmatic guidelines for addressing emerging privacy hazards in a timely manner. The dearth of substantive privacy standards for behavioral advertising and emerging location-based services highlight these gaps. To explore this problem, the privacy policies of ten large OSPs were evaluated in terms of strategies for complying with the EU-DPD and US-SHA and in terms of their role as tools for enabling informed decision-making. Analysis of these policies shows that OSPs do little more than comply with the black letter of the EU-DPD and USSHA. Tacit data collection is an illustrative instance. OSP privacy policies satisfice by acknowledging the nominal mechanisms behind tacit data collection supporting services that "enhance and customize the user experience," but these metaphors do not sufficiently elaborate the privacy implications necessary for the user to make informed choices. In contrast, privacy advocates prefer "privacy and surveillance" metaphors that draw users attention away from the immediate gratification of customized services. Although OSPs do bear some responsibility, neither the EU-DPD nor the US-SHA provide the guidance or incentives necessary to develop more substantive privacy standards. In light of these deficiencies, this work identifies an alternative, collaborative approach to the design of privacy standards. OSPs often obscure emerging privacy hazards in favor of promoting innovative services. Privacy advocates err on the other side, giving primacy to "surveillance" metaphors and obscuring the utility of information based services. Rather than forcing users to unravel the conflicting metaphors, collaborative approaches focus on surfacing shared concerns. The collaborative approach presented here attempts to create a forum in which OSPs, advertisers, regulators, and civil society organizations contribute to a strategic menu of technical and policy options that highlight mutually beneficial paths to second best solutions. Particular solutions are developed through a process of issue (re)framing focused on identifying common metaphors that highlight shared concerns, reduce overall information asymmetries, and surface the requirements for governance and privacy tools that address emerging risks. To illustrate this reframing process, common deficiencies identified in the set of privacy policies are presented along with strategic options and examples of potential reframings.
by Jesse H. Sowell, II.
S.M.in Technology and Policy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-103).
Hydrogels have become widely used in the fields of tissue engineering and drug delivery. One class of hydrogel is formed from synthetic oligopeptides that self-assemble into a solution of beta-sheet filaments. These filaments can aggregate to form a gel suitable for culture of various cell types. Examples of such self-assembling peptides are RAD16-I, RAD16-II, and KLD-12. One limitation of self-assembling peptide hydrogels is their mechanical weakness. Herein are presented computational and experimental studies that elucidate the microstructure and mechanical behavior of these materials. Strategies to enhance their mechanical properties are also examined. Steered molecular dynamics modeling was used to characterize the mechanical interaction between filaments, and a coarse-grained model was developed to extend the system to ordinary time scales. A microindentation assay was developed and used to characterize the mechanical properties of gels. Several strategies for enhancing the gels' mechanical properties were tested. Gel microstructure was observed in thin sections of material with transmission electron microscopy, revealing in detail the loose, disorganized structure of assembled beta-sheet filaments. The results demonstrate that these self-assembling peptide gels are formed from a loosely arranged structure of beta-sheet filaments, not from dense bundles of parallel filaments as was previously proposed. Estimates of gel stiffness based on this loose structure are in approximate agreement with experimental measurements. Among the strategies tested to increase gel stiffness, introducing cross-links and increasing solid concentration proved to be effective approaches.
by Nathan Allen Hammond.
Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2011.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
The nature of habits, their formation, expression, and underlying causes have been pondered for centuries. Early definitions, still in use today, posited that habits are actions associated with outcomes that, when repeated, become stimulus-response associations that can be performed automatically, or without the reinforcement of a rewarding stimulus. A prominent theory of what drives the process is reinforcement learning (RL). This definition and underlying theory may be inadequate to describe the complicated series of actions that we form and express as habits in every day life. We designed a task that would test the limits of RL by providing a nearly infinite number of action choices and no clear association with reward. We recorded using ~100 chronically implanted independently moveable electrodes from the frontal eye fields (FEF), prefrontal cortex (PFC), and caudate nucleus (CN) simultaneously as naïve monkeys performed a free-viewing scan task. Neural recordings began on the first day of this task where a random dot on a grid of targets was chosen to be baited with reward on every trial and the monkeys were free to look around until they captured the baited target. We found that monkeys formed selfguided and uninstructed sequences of eye movements that gradually evolved over months of task performance and did not appear to be driven by overall reward or cost measures. Only on a much smaller, trial-by-trial, time scale were we able to detect the RL forces at work and that the monkeys were minimizing cost on an extremely local level. We also found that neural units in the FEF showed standard single direction and non-standard multiple direction tuning very early in task acquisition. We also found a disproportionately high number of units whose tuning directions were selective for those eye movement combinations that were members of the monkeys' habitual sequences. This suggested that the FEF very rapidly adapts to the task at hand and the neural representation becomes biased towards those sequences that are repeated. Together these findings lay the foundation to understand natural habit formation and the neural mechanisms that underlie it.
by Theresa M. Desrochers.
Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2010.
"September 2010." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-133).
This thesis consists of three papers on the nature of scientific theories and inference. In many cases, scientific theories can be regarded as organized into hierarchies, with higher levels sometimes called 'paradigms', and lower levels encoding more specific or concrete hypotheses. The first chapter uses hierarchical Bayesian models to show that the assessment of higher level theories may proceed by the same Bayesian principles as the assessment of more specific hypotheses. It thus shows how the evaluation of higher level theories can be evidence-driven, despite claims to the contrary by authors such as Kuhn. The chapter also discusses how hierarchical Bayesian models may help to resolve certain issues for Bayesian philosophy of science, particularly how to model the introduction of new theories. The second chapter discusses the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Bayesianism. Van Fraassen has raised the concern that the explanatory considerations in IBE go beyond the Bayesian formalism, making IBE incompatible with Bayesianism. The response so far has been that the explanatory considerations can be accommodated within the Bayesian formalism by stipulating that they should constrain the assignment of the probabilities. I suggest a third alternative, which is that the extra explanatory considerations have their origins in the relationship between higher and lower level theories and can be modeled in Bayesian terms without directly constraining the probabilities. The third chapter discusses an aspect of the debate over scientific realism. The No Miracles argument and the Pessimistic Induction are often seen as the primary arguments for and against scientific realism. Yet recently it has been alleged that both of these arguments commit the base-rate fallacy. I argue that both arguments can be formulated in a non-fallacious manner, so neither should be dismissed on the grounds of faulty form alone.
by Leah Henderson.
Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
Two problems related to the assessment of the performance of cementitious materials in the nuclear fuel cycle are investigated by means of atomistic simulations. The first is the structural and dynamic nature of water confined in the nano-pores of the highly disordered calcium-silicate-hydrate (C-S-H) which is the major binding phase of cement. The microscopic structure and dynamics of water confined in C-S-H have important implications on describing the cohesion and mechanical behavior of cement from its setting to its aging; nevertheless they have not been fully elucidated prior to this thesis. The second problem is the encapsulation of strontium-90, an important radionuclide, in C-S-H and its crystalline analogue tobermorite 9 A by means of cationic exchange with calcium. We showed that the nature of the interaction between the confined water and C-SH is hydrophilic. The interlayer calcium ions and the disorder in the silicate chains act synergistically to achieve this hydrophilic interaction. The water molecules ultra-confined in this hydrophilic and disordered interlayer space adopt a unique multi-range structure: at short range they are tetrahedrally coordinated but with distortions, at intermediate range they exhibit a structure similar to that of dense fluids and supercooled phases, and at ranges up to 10 A spatial correlations persist through dipole-dipole interactions that are enhanced by the directionality of the hydrogen bonds formed between the confined water and the defective silicate chains. This confined water exhibits a three-stage dynamics evidenced in the mean square displacement (MSD) results, with a clear cage stage characteristic of glassy dynamics similar to that of supercooled liquids and glass forming materials. The glassy dynamics is induced primarily because of the attractive interactions of water molecules with the calcium silicate walls, serving to constrain the motion of the water molecules at the interface, as if with an effective temperature lower than the actual simulation temperature. At intermediate time scales that correspond to the p-relaxation of glassy materials, the non-Gaussian parameter indicates a significant heterogeneity in the translational dynamics of the confined water, also consistent with the cage stage identified in the MSD of the water molecules. Strontium was shown to favor energetically substituting calcium in the interlayer sites in C-S-H and tobermorite 9 A with the trend more pronounced in the latter. The silicate chains in both cementitious waste forms were not affected by strontium substitution within our molecular dynamics simulation. Finally, we observed degradation in the mechanical properties in the strontium-containing cementitious waste form. The degradation increases with the increase of strontium concentration, but overall this degradation is not limiting for the use of C-S-H or tobermorite 9 A as candidates in immobilizing radioactive strontium.
by Mostafa Youssef Mahmoud Youssef.
S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2010.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-123).
In this thesis, we develop multi-resource integer optimization formulations for coordinating Traffic Flow Management (TFM) programs with equity considerations. Our multi-resource approaches ignore aircraft connectivity between flights, but allow a single flight to utilize multiple capacity-controlled resources. For example, when both Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) and Airspace Flow Programs (AFPs) are simultaneously in effect, a single flight may be impacted by a GDP and one or more AFPs. We show that due to the similarity with current practice, our models can be applied directly in the current Collaborative Decision-Making (CDM) environment. In the first part of the thesis, we develop these formulations as extensions of a well-studied, existing nationwide TFM formulation and compare them to approaches utilized in practice. In order to make these comparisons, we first develop a metric, Time-Order Deviation, for evaluating schedule fairness in the multi-resource setting. We use this metric to compare approaches in terms of both schedule fairness and allocated flight delays. Using historical scenarios derived from 2007 data, we show that, even with limited interaction between TFM programs, our Ration-by-Schedule Exponential Penalty model can improve the utilization of air transportation system resources. Skipping ahead, in the last part of the thesis, we develop a three-stage sequential evaluation procedure in order to analyze the TFM allocation process in the context of a dynamic CDM environment. To perform this evaluation we develop an optimization-based airline disruption response model, which utilizes passenger itinerary data to approximate the underlying airline objective, resulting in estimated flight cancellations and aircraft swaps between flight legs. Using this three-stage sequential evaluation procedure, we show that the benefits of an optimization-based allocation are likely overstated based on a simple flight-level analysis. The difference between these results and those in the first part of the thesis suggests the importance of the multi-stage evaluation procedure. Our results also suggest that there may be significant benefits to incorporating aircraft flow balance considerations into the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) TFM allocation procedures. The passenger itinerary data required for the airline disruption response model in the last part of the thesis are not publicly available, thus in the second part of the thesis, we develop a method for modeling passenger travel and delays. In our approach for estimating historical passenger travel, we develop a discrete choice model trained on one quarter of proprietary booking data to disaggregate publicly available passenger demand. Additionally, we extend a network-based heuristic for calculating passenger delays to estimate historical passenger delays for 2007. To demonstrate the value in this approach, we investigate how passenger delays are affected by various features of the itinerary, such as carrier and time of travel. Beyond its applications in this thesis, we believe the estimated passenger itinerary data will have broad applicability, allowing a passenger-centric focus to be incorporated in many facets of air transportation research. To facilitate these endeavors, we have publicly shared our estimated passenger itinerary data for 2007.
by Douglas Fearing.
Ph.D.

A importância da avaliação no ciclo de gestão é por demais evidente em qualquer empresa. Nos hospitais a sua importância é ainda maior nomeadamente pela exiguidade de recursos, pelas exigências do processo - a vida ou "apenas" a saúde está em causa - e pelo custo para a Comunidade de não haver eficácia e eficiência na produção hospitalar. Este projecto desenvolve-se ao longo de cinco partes principais. Na primeira procede-se ao enquadramento teórico do tema, situando a avaliação no processo de gestão e apontando as especificidades dos hospitais e da sua avaliação. Descreve-se depois a situação actual em Portugal começando pelo sistema de saúde e terminando na avaliação dos hospitais. Finalmente procede-se ao desenvolvimento do modelo, com a identificação do problema e dos objectivos a atingir. (...) Na parte final tentaremos discutir os diversos aspectos envolvidos e retirar as devidas conclusões.

A forma de tratamento e destinação final ainda mundialmente preponderante para os resíduos sólidos urbanos é o aterro sanitário, método que gera, além de uma massa sólida residual, parcialmente estabilizada, subprodutos finais líquidos e gasosos. O efluente líquido, conhecido como lixiviado, necessita tratamento específico, devido a sua elevada nocividade ao meio ambiente, em função, principalmente, de suas elevadas concentrações de nitrogênio amoniacal e de matéria orgânica, em elevado percentual, recalcitrante. O presente trabalho avaliou em escala de bancada o tratamento, via processo físico-químico, através de coagulação-floculação, de lixiviado bruto proveniente de aterro sanitário Central de Resíduos do Recreio (operado pela Companhia Riograndense de Valorização de Resíduos), desprovido de qualquer tratamento prévio, e de lixiviado pré-tratado biologicamente em reatores sequenciais em batelada (RSB). Para o processo de coagulação-floculação foram testados os coagulantes policloreto de alumínio (PAC), cloreto férrico, sulfato férrico e tanino. Sucessivas etapas foram planejadas para a determinação de dosagem e ajuste de pH ótimos, para cada coagulante empregado, e para a verificação da influência de tempos e gradientes de misturas, bem como foi testada a aplicação de polímeros auxiliares de floculação. As variáveis resposta utilizadas para o monitoramento e a avaliação de eficiências foram a cor verdadeira, turbidez (com e sem prévia filtração), DQO, volume de lodo gerado e pH. O uso de reator sequencial em batelada objetivou nitrificação/desnitrificação convencional das elevadas concentrações de nitrogênio amoniacal e eventual oxidação de matéria carbonácea. Verificou-se que os diferentes tempos e gradientes de mistura testados, assim como a utilização de polímeros auxiliares, não produziram impactos nos resultados. Os coagulantes inorgânicos apresentaram elevadas eficiências de remoção, com destaque para o cloreto férrico, o qual na dosagem de 1102 mgFe+3/L e ajuste inicial de pH em 6,2 removeu 98% da cor verdadeira e da turbidez filtrada, 63% da DQO, 40% da DBO5, e 88% de turbidez não filtrada do lixiviado bruto. Apesar da recalcitrância de considerável fração da matéria orgânica do lixiviado, o RSB2 removeu 40% da DQO e 60% da DBO5 originais. A coagulação-floculação do efluente do RSB2 necessitou inferiores dosagens dos coagulantes em relação ao processo com lixiviado bruto. O cloreto férrico, em dosagem ótima de 826 mgFe+3/L e ajuste de pH em 6,3, removeu 95% da cor, 77% da DQO, 82% da DBO5, 94% da turbidez filtrada e 92% da turbidez não filtrada. Concluiu-se por elevada viabilidade técnica do processo de coagulação-floculação para o lixiviado com e sem pré-tratamento, a partir da otimização das condições de contorno do processo. O pré-tratamento em RSB, quando utilizado controle de pH, demonstrou grande potencial para nitrificação/desnitrificação e oxidação de significante parcela da matéria carbonácea do lixiviado bruto.
The form of treatment and disposal still prevalent worldwide for solid waste is the landfill, a method that generates, in addition to a solid mass residual partially stabilized, liquid and gas end products. The effluent liquid, known as leachate, requires specific treatment, due to its high harmfulness to the environment, due mainly to its high concentrations of ammonia nitrogen and organic matter in high percentage, recalcitrant. This study evaluated the treatment on bench scale, via physico-chemical process, by coagulation-flocculation, of raw leachate from Central de Resíduos do Recreio landfill (operated by Companhia Riograndense de Valorização de Resíduos), devoid of any previous treatment, and biologically pretreated leachate reactors in sequential batch reactors (SBR). For the process of flocculation-coagulation were tested polyaluminum chloride (PAC), ferric chloride, ferric sulfate and tannin. Successive stages were designed for determining dosage and optimum pH adjustment for each coagulant employed and for verifying the influence of times and gradients mixtures, as well as tested in the application of polymers flocculation auxiliaries. The answers used for parametric monitoring and evaluation of efficiencies were the true color, turbidity (with and without prior filtration), COD, sludge volume and pH. The use of sequential batch reactor aimed conventional nitrification/denitrification of the high concentrations of ammonia nitrogen and eventual oxidation of carbonaceous matter. It was found that the different gradients and mixing times tested, as well as the use of auxiliary polymers, did not produce impact on the results. The inorganic coagulants showed high removal efficiencies, especially ferric chloride, which at a dose of 1102 mgFe+3/L and initial pH adjusted to 6.2, removed 98% of the true color and filtered turbidity, 63% of COD, 40% of BOD5 and 88% of unfiltered turbidity. Despite the considerable fraction of the recalcitrance of organic matter in the leachate, the SBR2 removed 40% of COD and 60% of BOD5 of the original. The coagulation-flocculation of the effluent from SBR2 required lower dosages of coagulants in relation to the similar process with raw leachate. Ferric chloride in optimum dosage of 826 mgFe+3/L and adjusting pH to 6.3, removed 95% of color, 77% of COD, 82% of BOD5, 94% of the filtered turbidity and 92% of unfiltered turbidity. It was concluded by high technical feasibility of the process of flocculation-coagulation for the leachate with and without pre-treatment, based on the optimization of the boundary conditions of the process. The pre-treatment with SBR, when pH control, demonstrated high potential for nitrification/denitrification and oxidation of a significant portion of the carbonaceous of the raw leachate.

A comprehensive deposition and dispersion model was built for the South African Highveld and Waterberg areas using CALPUFF with the aim of studying the effects of biogenic NOx emissions on sulphur and nitrogen deposition. The effect of industrial H2S emission on sulphur deposition was also investigated for the Highveld. Emission sources inventoried or the Highveld and Waterberg area included industrial sources, vehicle exhaust emissions, household fuel burning emissions and emissions from power stations. The Highveld model was the most extensive. Three scenarios were modelled: average rainfall year (2001), below average rainfall year (2003) and above average rainfall year (2010). The modelling domain was 350 km × 350 km. The Waterberg priority area was only modelled for 2006 and the domain size was 130 km ×100 km. To quantify biogenic soil NOX emissions, models was constructed for both areas using land use data from CALMET, rainfall data and atmospheric ground level temperatures covering each modelling domain. Use was made of work done by Yienger and Levy (1995). To accommodate CALPUFF each area was divided into smaller area sources, each with a specific hourly NOX emission rate. The biogenic NOx emitted made up 3.96 %, 4.14 % and 3.34 % of total released NOx for 2001, 2003 and 2010 respectively. This is significantly more than is released by household fuel burning, small industrial sources and biomass burning. Dry nitrogen deposition rates were affected most, adding between 1.69 - 6.19 % at various receptor locations. Wet deposition rates were affected very little (0.13 % to 0.75 %). Effect on total nitrogen deposition rates ranged from 0.32 % to 1.77 %. CALPUFF was unable to account for H2S conversion to SO2 in its reaction scheme model, therefore conversion rates had to be approximated from observations made on the Highveld by Igbafe (2007). Assuming different conversion percentages for each season, and inputting the converted emissions rates as SO2 emissions sources into CALPUFF, it was predicted that H2S contributes an average of 4.85 %, an average of 5.95 %, and an average of 5.15 % for wet S, dry S and total S deposition respectively Highveld dispersion and deposition predictions are reported on for the three modelling periods of 2001, 2003 and 2010. The modelled biogenic emissions were included in the model. Spatial plots for wet, dry and total S and N deposition were produced. Wet, dry and total S and N deposition rates at specific receptor locations are reported on. Waterberg biogenic emission are only 2.3 % of total NOx emissions for the Waterberg area and would affect nitrogen deposition values very little compared to the nitrogen deposition produced by the emissions from Matimba and Medupi power stations. Because of this it was decided not to run a CALPUFF dispersion and deposition model for the Waterberg area.
Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
Chemical Engineering
MEng
Unrestricted

In this study, the effect of ‗explicit reflective guided inquiry‘ (ERGI) laboratory practical activities on first-year physics students‘ understanding of nature of science (NOS) and academic performance is investigated. Ninety seven students participated in the study and were systematically assigned to the control group that did recipe-based practical activities and the experimental group that did ERGI laboratory practical activities. Both groups had to answer the same explicit reflective questions on an aspect of NOS at the end of each practical session. Data were collected using the VNOS Form-C questionnaire, focus group interviews, explicit reflective questions, combined practical and theoretical year-end examinations. Using blind scoring, students‘ views were classified as informed, mixed or naïve for each aspect of NOS. The percentage of informed views was larger for the experimental group in each of the seven NOS aspects. Overall, the percentage informed views in the experimental group was larger by a statistically significant margin of 10 percentage points (p = 0.008). The largest differences were observed in the tentative nature of science, the distinction between theory and law, and the role of imagination and creativity. Additionally, males showed more informed NOS understandings than females, while low achieving students were better informed than high achievers, but the differences were not statistically significant. The experimental group did not perform any better than the control group in the practical and theoretical year-end examinations. Therefore, this study demonstrated that ERGI laboratory practical activities activities enhanced first-year physics students‘ understanding of NOS but not their academic performance.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
PhD
Unrestricted

[EN] This research has its starting point in the environmental problems of the planet, to establish new paradigms that improve the quality of life in today's society, providing a contribution by the use of design. The case studies of the 2010 Shanghai Expo and the 2015 Milan Expo will be examined, along with two summer workshops conducted at the College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University (China) in 2012 and 2014, to determine how design plays a major role in social innovation. This study is divided into four areas of study: reality, movement, action and future research. Reality will examine the situation of our planet from a general environmental point of view. A discourse on the topic of social innovation and the relationship the designers have in this area also starts here establishing the role design professionals or teachers have in today's world. Movement will analyze two important milestones in the field of design: the 2010 Expo Shanghai, as a starting point and the 2015 Milan Expo, as the end point, in order to learn how these cultural initiatives have proposed solutions to specific problems. A topic that deepens is, for example, the case of the use of bamboo, as ancestral material and its use in the world today, and how it can improve our quality of life as well as our environment. Action will study the results of the summer workshops conducted in 2012 and 2014, under the title IDSS, a workshop organized by the College of Design and Innovation of Tongji University (Shanghai) and DESIS-China and the studio of TEKTAO in Shanghai, China. The result of these studies has become the present thesis, which aims to demonstrate how the designer, with participation in certain projects or using ancestral materials such as natural fibers in globalized environments, can contribute to the development of products or services incorporating a high level of environmental awareness. The case study workshop held in 2014 on Chonming Island (China), entitled "Urban farming: Inside and Outside" and the Milan Expo 2015 concludes with this investigation. Future research will focus mainly on establishing the impact of sustainable materials, such as vegetable fibers, on today's society with the support of the Red RISA (Research Network for ancestral knowledge) of which I am a member, which is based in Ibarra, Ecuador, and dedicated to related research and teaching tasks,. In the short term, it is planning a workshop with students from the ETSID (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería del Diseño) and an invited foreign university about nutritional self-reliance and self-sustainable crops. The current workshop themes have been selected for the Universal Exhibitions and the workshops we will hold with design students overlap in many areas. The topics I am studying often coincide with a common theme, but approached from different perspectives, leading to a "common development movement". The scheme I have used as the theme of this thesis is a search for solutions that focus towards a present but uppermost for future research. It seems very ambitious but the goal of this research is exciting. Knowing "new realities" of the behavior of some human groups leads to detection of and focus on its operational mechanisms. Setting in motion processes of social innovation highlights the challenge of possible use of new models of behavior. But does this lead in these fields to new sustainable areas of change? Arguably yes, since this approach of the designers opens a new area of work where solutions develop new ideas in product-service union. Professor Manzini, in his theory of social approach, proposes individualism: "When you decide to start doing things with and for others, you begin to mix what I call environmental sustainability with the partner" . From this fusion arises a whole ecosystem that provides access to other products, being only a part of the whole. This is connected to oriented towards the definition of new services.
[ES] Esta investigación tiene su punto de partida en la preocupación por la problemática medio ambiental del planeta, para tratar de establecer nuevos paradigmas que mejoren la calidad de vida de la sociedad actual, aportando una posible contribución a través del diseño. Se examinaran los casos de estudio de las Expo Shanghái 2010 y la Expo Milán 2015, junto a dos Summer workshops, realizados en el College of Design and Innovation Tongji University Shanghái (China) en los años 2012 y 2014, para detectar como el diseño es un actor importante de la innovación social. El presente estudio se divide en cuatro ejes de estudio: realidad, movimiento, acción e investigación futura. Realidad, examina la situación de nuestro planeta desde el punto de vista medio ambiental. Se inicia un discurso sobre el tema de innovación social y la relación de los diseñadores respecto a esta materia. Se define cuál es su rol como profesionales o docentes del diseño en la actualidad. Movimiento, analiza dos hitos en los que diseño es un exponente fundamental, la Expo Shanghái 2010, como punto de partida y la Expo Milán 2015, como punto final, para conocer como desde estas iniciativas culturales se tratan temas y se plantean soluciones a problemas concretos. Una profundiza en el estudio del uso del bambú como material ancestral y su uso en el mundo actual mejorando nuestra calidad de vida y la de nuestro entorno, en el segundo caso se revisa la problemática de los procesos de cómo optimizar el desarrollo de la alimentación mundial. Acción, estudia los resultados obtenidos en los Summer workshops realizados en 2012 y 2014, bajo título: IDSS workshop organized by College of Design and Innovation de la Tongji University (Shanghái, China) y DESIS-China and studio of TEKTAO en Shanghái, China. Esta tesis que plantea como el diseñador con su participación en algunos proyectos referencia, puede contribuir para el desarrollo de productos o servicios con un alto nivel de concienciación por el medio ambiente. Con el estudio del caso del Workshop realizado en 2014 en Chonming Island (China), titulado "Urban farming: Inside and Outside" y la Expo de Milán 2015, se concluye ésta investigación, aprendiendo del bagaje que se desprende de la relación del diseño con la innovación social. Investigación futura, para continuar, nos apoyaremos en la Red RISA (Red de Investigación de Saberes Ancestrales) con sede en Ibarra (Ecuador), que se dedicada a tareas relacionadas con la investigación y docencia, de la que soy miembro. Respecto a la segunda línea de trabajo a corto plazo se plantea un workshop para realizar con alumnos de la Etsid y de una universidad extranjera invitada, sobre la autoalimentación. Los temas que estamos estudiando coinciden en muchas ocasiones con un tema común, pero que se aborda desde diversas perspectivas, dando lugar a un "movimiento común de desarrollo". El esquema que he utilizado como hilo conductor de la presente tesis doctoral es una búsqueda de soluciones que se enfocan hacia una Investigación presente pero sobre todo futura. Parece muy ambicioso pero el objetivo a desarrollar es apasionante. Conocer "nuevas realidades" del comportamiento de algunos grupos humanos, nos conduce a detectar y focalizar sus mecanismos de funcionamiento. Puestos en marcha procesos de innovación social, se pone de manifiesto el desafío el posible uso de nuevos modelos de comportamiento. Lo que conduce a nuevos espacios de cambio en el ámbito de la sostenibilidad. Desde este planteamiento a los diseñadores se nos abre una nueva área de trabajo donde las soluciones desarrollan nuevas ideas en la unión producto-servicio. Según el Profesor Manzini, en su teoría de enfoque social, propone dejar de lado el individualismo: "Cuando decides empezar a hacer cosas con y por los otros, empiezas a mezclar lo que llamo la sustentabilidad ambiental con la social ". De esta fusión surge todo un ecosistema que da acces
[CAT] Aquesta investigació té el seu punt de partida en la problemática ambiental del planeta per tractar d'establir nous paradigmes que milloren la qualitat de vida de la societat actual, aportant una possible contribució a través del disseny. S'examinaran els casos d'estudi de l'Expo Shanghái 2010 i l'Expo Milan 2015, junt amb dos Summer Workshops realitzats el 2012 i el 2014 al College of Design and Innovation Tongji Universtity (Shanghái, Xina), per detectar com el disseny és un actor important de la innovació social. El present estudi es divideix en quatre eixos d'estudi: realitat, moviment, acció i investigació/recerca futura. Realitat, examina la situació del nostre planeta des del punt de vista mediambiental. S'inicia un discurs sobre el tema de la innovació social i la seua relació amb els dissenyadors definint quin és el paper d'aquests com a professionals o com a docents del disseny actual. Moviment, analitza dues fites importants en les quals el disseny és un exponent fonamental: l'Expo Shanghái 2010 com a punt de partida i l'Expo Milan 2015 com a punt final, per tal de conéixer com aquestes iniciatives culturals tracten temes y plantegen solucions a problemes concrets. La primera iniciativa profunditza en l'estudi de l'ús del bambú, un material ancestral, en el món actual per tal de millorar la nostra qualitat de vida i el nostre entorn. Mentre que la segona revisa la problemàtica dels procesos per optimitzar el desenvolupament sostenible de l'alimentació mundial. Acció, estudia els resultats obtinguts als Summer Workshops realitzats a Shanghái (Xina), als anys 2012 i 2014 sota els títols IDSS workshop organized by College of Design and Innovation de la Tongji University i DESIS-China and studio of TEKTAO. Ambdós es van realitzar al marc del Chongming Sustainable Community Project (Projecte Sostenible de la Comunitat de Chongming). Així, amb l'estudi del cas del workshop "Urban farming: inside and outside", realitzat a l'Illa de Chongming (Xina, 2014), i el de l'Expo de Milà 2015, conclou aquesta investigació aprenent del bagatge que es desprén de la relació del disseny amb la innovació social. Investigació futura, per continuar, ens recolzarem en la Red RISA (Red de Investigación de Saberes Ancestrales), amb la seu a Ibarra (Ecuador), dedicada a feines relacionades amb la investigació i la docència i de la qual forme part. Respecte a la segona línia de treball a curt termini, es planteja un workshop sobre autoalimentació per realitzar-lo amb alumnes de la ETSID i d'alguna Universitat extrangera convidada. Els temes que estem estudiant coincideixen en moltes ocasions amb un tema comú, encara que tractat des de diverses perspectives, originant un "moviment comú de desenvolupament". L'esquema que he utilitzat com a fil conductor de la present Tesi Doctoral és una recerca de solucions enfocades a una investigació present però també futura. Sembla molt ambiciós però l'objectiu a desenvolupar és apassionant. Conèixer "noves realitats" sobre el comportament d'alguns grups humans ens conduiex a detectar i focalitzar els seus mecanismes de funcionament. Engegant diversos procesos de innovació social es posa de manifest la possibiltat de nous models de comportament, la qual cosa produeix nous espais de canvi en l'àmbit de la sostenibilitat. Des d'aquest plantejament, als dissenyadors se'ns obri una nova àrea de treball on les solucions desenvolupen noves idees sobre la unió servei-producte. Segons el Professor Manzini i la seua teria de l'enfocament social, proposa l'abandonament de l'individualisme: "Quan decideixes començar a fer coses amb i pels altres, és quan comences a barrejar el que jo anomene la sustentabilitat ambiental amb la social ". D'aquesta fusió sorgeix tot un ecosistema que dóna accés a altres productes, sent només una part de tot el conjunt.
Esteve Sendra, MC. (2016). REVISIÓN Y CONSIDERACIÓN DE UNA PRAXIS DEDICADA A OPTIMIZAR LA CALIDAD DE VIDA, CON EL USO DEL DISEÑO COMO CATALIZADOR DE LA INNOVACIÓN SOCIAL (2010-2015). ESTUDIOS DE CASOS [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/62210
TESIS

[EN] Abstract of Doctoral Thesis: "The Film Image in Contemporary Art" An Aesthetic Review: Between The Film Image and Image Matter. Eduardo Ceballos Silva This thesis dissertation reflects on the complex effects of the re-signification of the film image in contemporary art, and its impact the aesthetic consideration of the resulting product. In this reflection, the relevance of conceptual art in the artistic re-signification is defended, as well as the process played by the concept of appropriation in contemporary art. Based on the consideration of "ready-made" of Marcel Duchamp as inexcusable point of emergence of the "appropriationism", in this thesis are reviewed and studied the different forms of appropriation of film images in contemporary art. Structurally, the thesis, which was entitled "The Film Image in Contemporary Art", assumes a theoretical and practical condition. In the early chapters, are exposed the conceptual and historical foundations that will backbone the artistic proposal that will be detailed in the second part of this research. Furthermore, the research was developed according to a deductive methodology, since initially is started from general aspects and theoretic/practical positions to reach particular inferences. Specifically, first the concept of "appropriationism" is defined within the visual art; then, the research particularizes in the analysis of different forms of appropriation in the aesthetic sphere and, more precisely, in the use of the film image within the context of contemporary visual arts. Finally, in this thesis an artistic proposal is presented from the theoretical postulates investigated. This artistic proposal is formed by eight series of works, using different formats and techniques, which are made during a period of seven years.
[ES] Resumen de Tesis Doctoral: "La Imagen Fílmica en el Arte Contemporáneo" Una Revisión Estética: Entre la Imagen Fílmica y la Imagen Materia de Eduardo Ceballos Silva. La tesis doctoral de Eduardo Ceballos, reflexiona sobre los complejos efectos de re-significación de la imagen fílmica en el arte contemporáneo, y su incidencia en la consideración estética del producto resultante. En esta reflexión, se defiende la relevancia que tiene el arte conceptual en la re-significación artística, así como el proceso que ha desempeñado el concepto de apropiación en el arte contemporáneo. Partiendo de la consideración del ready made de Marcel Duchamp como punto inexcusable del surgimiento del apropiacionismo, se revisan y estudian de forma concreta las diferentes formas de apropiación de imágenes fílmicas en el arte contemporáneo. Estructuralmente, "La Imagen Fílmica en el Arte Contemporáneo", asume una doble condición teórico-práctica. En los primeros capítulos del mismo, se asientan los fundamentos conceptuales e históricos que vertebrarán una propuesta artística que será detallada en la segunda parte de esta investigación. Asimismo, la investigación que se ha llevado a cabo se decanta por una metodología de corte deductiva, ya que se parte de los aspectos y posiciones teórico-prácticos generales para llegar a lo particular. Es decir, se comienza por definir el concepto de apropiacionismo dentro de las artes visuales para, después, particularizar la investigación en el análisis de las diferentes formas de apropiación en la esfera estética y, de manera más concreta, en la utilización de la imagen fílmica dentro del contexto de las artes visuales contemporáneas. Para terminar con una propuesta artística a partir de los postulados teóricos investigados y que consistió en la realización de ocho series de obras en diferentes formatos y técnicas, hecha en un período de 7 años.
[CAT] Resum de Tesi Doctoral: "La Imatge Fílmica en l'Art Contemporani " Una Revisió Estètica: Entre la Imatge Fílmica i la Imatge Matèria d'Eduardo Ceballos Silva. La Tesi Doctoral d'Eduardo Ceballos, reflexiona sobre els complexos efectes de re-significació de la imatge fílmica en l'art contemporani, i la seua incidència en la consideració estètica del producte resultant. En esta reflexió, es defèn la rellevància que té l'art conceptual en la re-significació artística, així com el procés que ha exercit el concepte d'apropiació en l'art contemporani. Partint de la consideració del ready made de Marcel Duchamp com a punt inexcusable del sorgiment de l'apropiacionisme, es revisen i estudien en concret les diferents formes d'apropiació d'imatges fílmiques en l'art contemporani. Estructuralment, "La Imatge Fílmica en l'Art Contemporáni", assumix una doble condició teòrico-pràctica. En els primers capítols del mateix, s'assenten els fonaments conceptuals i històrics que vertebraran una proposta artística que serà detallada en la segona part d'esta investigació. Així mateix, la investigació que s'ha dut a fi es decanta per una metodologia d'estil deductiva, ja que es parteix dels aspectes i posicions teòrics-pràctics generals per a arribar al particular. És a dir, es comença per definir el concepte d'apropiacionisme dins de les arts visuals per a, després, particularitzar la investigació en l'anàlisi de les diferents formes d'apropiació en l'esfera estètica i, de manera més concreta, en la utilització de la imatge fílmica dins del context de les arts visuals contemporànies. Per a acabar amb una proposta artística a partir dels postulats teòrics investigats i que va consistir en la realització de huit sèries d'obres en diferents formats i tècniques, feta en un període de set anys.
Ceballos Silva, E. (2016). "La Imagen Fílmica en el Arte Contemporáneo" Una Revisión Estética: Entre la Imagen Fílmica y la Imagen Materia [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/62410
TESIS

Knowledge management (KM) is increasingly becoming important for organisations to enhance their competitive advantage, performance and to become more effective. Academic institutions and academic libraries, in particular, have come to the realisation that they too can benefit from knowledge management and are increasingly looking to adopt appropriate means to effectively manage their knowledge resources so as to improve the services rendered to their patrons. Knowledge management systems (KMS) are suitable means for academic libraries to manage knowledge and enable the processes of creation, storage, sharing and application of knowledge. While issues related to the design and implementation of knowledge management systems have been widely discussed within various sectors such as the business sector, there is a paucity of research pertaining to KMS implementation in academic libraries yet libraries have started to use several technologies for KM without putting certain issues that are critical to the successful implementation into consideration. Therefore, this study, puts forwards the idea of a KMS in Makerere University Library, exploring several aspects with the aim of discovering how the library can successfully implement a knowledge management system and in so doing explore the readiness of Makerere University Library to implement a KMS. An exploratory study was done adopting the qualitative research approach with Makerere University Library as the case study. The study involved interviews with eight library staff members in the librarian and IT staff categories that were purposively selected to provide information to the study. The major findings from the study revealed that, the majority of library staff at Makerere University Library understand the meaning of knowledge and knowledge management concepts though more training is still needed to clarify these concepts to some staff that do not have a clear understanding of the two concepts. The study also revealed that, the technological infrastructure of the library needs to be updated to support the KMS implementation. Other factors discovered that are key for the successful KMS design and implementation include: library management support, KMS budget, library culture, KM strategy, policies and guidelines, rewards and incentives. The study also identified benefits of a KMS for the library as well as challenges that the library may face in implementing a KMS. Finally, the study puts forward recommendations in the form of strategies for the library to successfully implement a KMS.
Mini Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2016.
Information Science
MIT
Unrestricted

Brain tumors are part of a group of common, non-communicable, chronic and potentially lethal diseases affecting mostfamilies in Europe. Imaging plays a central role in brain tumor management, from detection and classification to staging andcomparison.
Increasingly, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan is being used for suspected brain tumors, because in addition tooutline the normal brain structures in great detail, has a high sensitivity for detecting the presence of, or changes within, a tumor.Currently most of the process related to brain tumors such as diagnosis, therapy, and surgery planning are based on its previoussegmentation from MRI. Brain tumor segmentation from MRI is a challenging task that involves various disciplines. The tumors to besegmented are anatomical structures, which are often non-rigid and complex in shape, vary greatly in size and position, and exhibitconsiderable variability from patient to patient. Moreover, the task of labeling brain tumors in MRI is highly time consuming and thereexists significant variation between the labels produced by different experts.
The challenges associated with automated brain tumor segmentation have given rise to many different segmentationapproaches. Although the reported accuracy of the proposed methods is promising, these approaches have not gained wide acceptance among the neuroscientists for every day clinical practice. Two of the principal reasons are the lack of standardizedprocedures, and the deficiency of the existing methods to assist medical decision following a technician way of work.
For a brain tumor segmentation system has acceptance among neuroscientists in clinical practice, it should supportmedical decision in a transparent and interpretable way emulating the role of a technician, considering his experience and knowledge. This includes knowledge of the expected appearance, location, variability of normal anatomy, bilateral symmetry, andknowledge about the expected intensities of different tissues. The image related problems and the variability in tissue distribution among individuals in the human population makes that some degree of uncertainty must be considered together with segmentationresults.
A possible solution for designing complex systems, in which it is required to incorporate the experience of an expert, or the related concepts appear uncertain, is the use of soft computing techniques such as fuzzy systems. An important advantage of fuzzysystems is their ability for handling vague information.
In this work, it is proposed the development of a method to assist the specialists in the process of segmenting braintumors. The main objective is to develop a system that can follow a technician way of work, considering his experience andknowledge. More concretely, it is presented a fully automatic and unsupervised segmentation method, which considers humanknowledge. The method successfully manages the ambiguity of MR image features being capable of describing knowledge about thetumors in vague terms. The method was developed making use of the powerful tools provided by fuzzy set theory.
This thesis presents a step-by-step methodology for the automatic MRI brain tumor segmentation. For achieving the fullyautomatic and unsupervised segmentation, objective measures are delineated by means of adaptive histogram thresholds for defining the non-tumor and tumor populations. For defining the tumor population a symmetry analysis is conducted.
The proposed approach introduces a new way to automatically define the membership functions from the histogram. The proposed membership functions are designed to adapt well to the MRI data and efficiently separate the populations. Since any post-processing is needed, and the unique pre-processing operation is the skull stripping, the proposed segmentation technique reduces the computational times. The proposed approach is quantitatively comparable to the most accurate existing methods, even thoughthe segmentation is done in 2D.

My dissertation focuses on the moral philosophy of Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza in the context of the revival of Stoicism within the seventeenth century. There are many misinterpretations about early modern ethical theories due to a lack of proper awareness of Stoicism in the early modern period. My project rectifies this by highlighting understated Stoic themes in these early modern texts that offer new clarity to their morality. Although these three philosophers hold very different metaphysical commitments, each embraces a different aspect of Stoicism, letting it influence but not define his work. By addressing the Stoic themes on the morality of these three authors, I also hope to help better capture the intellectual climate of the time by bringing Stoic themes into the foreground. Stoicism is a Hellenistic philosophy that considered the passions a sickness of the intellect and the source of all human suffering; they believed the cure was virtue, which was obtained through replacing irrational passions with rational beliefs. Stoicism had a revival in the Renaissance ushering in a wave of Neostoic authors who play an important role in shaping the intellectual landscape of the following centuries. My first two chapters discuss Descartes, who wrote a “provisional morality” early in his public life, only (as I show) to ignore the subject of ethics until near his death. In my first chapter I argue that, though many present-day scholars misread Descartes’ first ethics as part of his final ethics, this earliest “provisional morality” mimics Neostoic Skeptics such as Montaigne and is provisional because his method of doubt is also provisional. In my second chapter I show that Descartes’ late, and more developed, moral theory attempts to synthesize a variety of ancient, and seemingly contradictory, ethical traditions: Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Aristotelianism. In many ways Descartes embraces Stoic morality, but as a mechanist he does not view passions as an intellectual sickness; rather they are a physiological event, an amoral instrument that can be used to help control one’s irrational desires. I further defend my thesis externally by showing that this is the reading supported by Descartes’ contemporaries including critics such as Leibniz and early Cartesians such as Antoine Le Grand and Pierre-Sylvain Régis My third chapter discusses Pascal, who embraces Stoicism differently. Pascal offers Stoicism as the first tier of a binary ethics: modeled after Augustine’s city of God and city of man, it is an alternative moral code for those who are ignorant of the good and true happiness. Finally, in my fourth chapter, I discuss two common misinterpretations of Spinoza’s ethics: one of them neglects the Stoic influence on his thought while the other embraces it too strongly, portraying him as an unadulterated Stoic. Although there are ways that he is more Stoic than Descartes and Pascal, such as in his panpsychism and monism, this does not extend to his morality. Rather than accepting either of the two readings, I highlight anti- Stoic themes that are also present. I conclude that if the discussion is contained to his morality, Spinoza is no more Stoic than the other Neostoics I discuss in previous chapters.

In filming and digitizing human segmental motion, external markers do not necessarily represent a true picture of the actual bone movement. When surface markers are placed on the skin or skate boot (in ice hockey) they move according to skin or boot movement, which does not exactly match bone movement. This results in a misrepresentation of the joint axes of rotation and a greater margin of error in motion measurement and analysis. This problem occurs for ankle and foot movements as their motion is quantified about the ankle joint complex (talocrural and subtalar joints). Hockey skates are vastly more rigid than regular shoes and their restriction of foot movement is greater. Therefore, shoes and hockey skates cannot be considered identical. The present study aims at exploring differences amongst bone, skin, and skate marker based motions of the foot during skating. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This work approaches the little studied topic of compiler optimisations directed to network applications. It starts by investigating if there exist any fundamental differences between application domains that justify the development and tuning of domain-specific compiler optimisations. It shows an automated approach that is capable of identifying domain-specific workload characterisations and presenting them in a readily interpretable format based on decision trees. The generated workload profiles summarise key resource utilisation issues and enable compiler engineers to address the highlighted bottlenecks. By applying this methodology to data intensive network infrastructure application it shows that data organisation is the key obstacle to overcome in order to achieve high performance. It therefore proposes and evaluates three specialised data transformations (structure splitting, array regrouping, and software caching) against the industrial EEMBC networking benchmarks and real-world data sets. It also demonstrates on one hand that speedups of up to 2.62 can be achieved, but on the other that no single solution performs equally well across different network traffic scenarios. Hence, to address this issue, an adaptive software caching scheme for high frequency route lookup operations is introduced and its effectiveness evaluated one more time against EEMBC networking benchmarks and real-world data sets achieving speedups of up to 3.30 and 2.27. The results clearly demonstrate that adaptive data organisation schemes are necessary to ensure optimal performance under varying network loads. Finally this research addresses another issue introduced by data transformations such as array regrouping and software caching, i.e. the need for static analysis to allow efficient resource allocation. This thesis proposes a static code analyser that allows the automatic resource analysis of source code containing lists and tree structures. The tool applies a combination of amortised analysis and separation logic methodology to real code and is able to evaluate type and resource usage of existing data structures, which can be used to compute global resource consumption values for full data intensive network applications.

This qualitative study aims to address the current understanding of English language assessment of both the teachers and students in the secondary schools in Bangladesh. The study conducted semi-structured interviews with six English teachers and focus group interviews with two groups of students in two different secondary schools and these interview responses were compared to probe the related understandings and experiences of both the teachers and the students. These findings reveal that the present English assessment system in the secondary level in Bangladesh does not reflect a balanced development of all the language skills of the learners and there are inconsistencies between the stated objectives of teaching English and the actual teaching methods in the language teaching in the secondary schools in Bangladesh. Though summative assessment is still dominating, the practice of formative assessment is slowly developing. The study indicates that there has been a gradual shift in the assessment process and the teachers were trying to use individual assessment strategies to motivate the students’ learning. Both the teachers and the students in the study emphasised that current assessment is mainly based on reading and writing. However, for overall development of language skills, the secondary English language curriculum may need to be redesigned so that all the four skills are able to be included in the assessment system. Better opportunities for training to develop teachers’ effectiveness and their knowledge of learners should be considered also.

Cette étude, basée sur la surveillance des ondes d'émission acoustique (E.A.), présente le développement d'une approche de prédiction de l'initiation de la délamination de pièces composites soumises à des chargements statiques et en fatigue. La surveillance des ondes d'E.A. fait parti d'un nombre restreint de méthodes pouvant détecter, en continu, l'apparition et la croissance de dommages dans les matériaux composites. L'approche est comparée à des méthodes conventionnelles ainsi qu'à une modélisation numérique pour des composites à fibre de carbone unidirectionnels et tissés, sur une gamme de rapports de mode mixte. Le présent mémoire met en lumière les différentes étapes abordées durant l'étude. L'utilisation des matériaux composites est mise en contexte au premier chapitre. La complexité des matériaux composites ainsi que la nécessité de modèles de prédiction fiables sont soulignées. Le deuxième chapitre contient une revue de la littérature et présente les outils disponibles pour analyser le délaminage et bâtir un modèle prédictif de sa propagation. Les sujets traités sont la délamination dans un contexte de mécanique de la rupture, la modélisation numérique d'une propagation de fissure, l'approche du monitorage par émission acoustique puis l'analyse fractographiques des surfaces de rupture. Les résultats des essais mécaniques et de la modélisation sont présentés sous forme d'article dans le troisième chapitre. Des essais statiques et en fatigue ont permis de calculer le taux de restitution d'énergie de déformation à l'initiation de la délamination selon des méthodes classiques pour ensuite les comparer à une méthode développée, basée sur le suivi des ondes d'émission acoustique. Une série d'essais de propagation de la délamination en fatigue ont permis d'observer des corrélations entre les émissions acoustiques, la longueur de la délamination, la vitesse de croissance des fissures et la sévérité du chargement. Finalement, une méthodologie de reconnaissance des formes non supervisée est présentée afin de discriminer les signaux d'E.A. d'amorçage et de propagation de fissure du bruit associé à la fatigue.

Mestrado em Desenvolvimento e Cooperação Internacional
A presente dissertação analisa as relações de género e o sistema de dote na Índia, cruzando estas temáticas com o desenvolvimento e a educação. Um dos objectivos principais passa por perceber a influência da educação nas representações sociais das mulheres indianas sobre as relações de género e o sistema de dote. Por forma a responder a esta questão recorremos a bibliografia que discorre sobre os temas tratados, bem como a indicadores estatísticos sobre as temáticas do desenvolvimento humano e da igualdade de género, e a um trabalho de campo que consistiu na recolha de entrevistas na cidade de Hyderabad (Sul da Índia).
The present dissertation analyzes the gender relations and the dowry system in India, by interlinking these themes with development and education. One of the main purposes is to understand the influence of education on the Indian women’s social representations about the gender relations and the dowry system. In order to answer this question, we used not only bibliography about the subject, but also the analysis of development and gender equality indicators as well as the results of a field work based on interviews in the city of Hyderabad (South of India).

Determina la relación entre el edentulismo parcial o total, y calidad de vida en pacientes adultos mayores con ausencia parcial o total de sus piezas dentarias del Departamento de Geriatría del Hospital Nacional Arzobispo Loayza del año 2016. Es un estudio descriptivo, observacional y transversal. Evalúa a 152 personas adultas mayores mediante un cuestionario dividido en tres partes, la primera de datos generales como edad y sexo, la segunda del odontograma y la tercera parte corresponde al índice GOHAI que consta de 12 ítems relacionados a la salud oral, que comprenden tres dimensiones: la función física, función psicosocial, y el dolor e incomodidad. En los resultados se observa que el GOHAI en el Hospital Nacional Arzobispo Loayza indica un valor de 33.71. El 1.3% presenta respuesta de salud bucodental regular, con un GOHAI de 51.50 y el 98.7% presenta respuesta de mala calidad de vida con un GOHAI de 33.47. Concluye que la mayor parte de la muestra presenta una autopercepción mala de su calidad de vida relacionada a su salud oral.
Tesis

Magister Scientiae - MSc (Environ & Water Science)
The National Water Act of (1998) of South Africa has a goal of achieving equitable access to water resources, as well as achieving environmental sustainability and efficient use of water. Consequently, water resources management is being reformed to ensure the achievement of these principles. Allocation of water through granting of licenses for abstraction and storage of water has been implemented to ensure that historically disadvantaged individuals (HDIs) have access to water and to promote sustainable, efficient and beneficial use of water resources for the whole country. The Water Allocation Reform Policy is a tool that is used to implement the goal of the National Water Act and it is guided by the set objectives, which are to allocate 30% of all water to previously disadvantaged individuals by 2014, 45% by 2019 and 60% by 2025. Despite these efforts, there is evidence that smallholder emerging farmers who are part of the disadvantaged groups do not have access to water for productive use. Many studies conducted so far have shown that equitable, sustainable and efficient water allocation has not been achieved in South Africa. It is not very clear why this trend is continuing despite all efforts to the contrary. The aim of the study was to assess the contribution of the reforms of water allocation systems towards increasing access to water by historically disadvantaged groups in Barrydale area in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Interviews were conducted to determine how the reforms have influenced access to water for productive use by smallholder emerging farmers. Document review was undertaken to determine the progress in the implementation of the water allocation reform by the Breede-Overberg Catchment Management Agency (BGCMA). The results indicated that small-scale farmers do not have access to water for agricultural activities in Barrydale due to lack of components, which include financial funding, access to farming infrastructure and skills. The BGCMA has not completed the implementation of the Water Allocation Reform and as a result, mechanisms initiated by the BGCMA have not resulted in improved access to water by HDIs. The outcome of the study indicated a lack of implementation of the water allocation reforms by the BGCMA, hence there is still no increase to water access for agricultural use by HDIs.

The coast of South Africa is one of the most biologically diverse marine systems in the world but little is known about the parasites occurring in this environment. A survey of the parasites of an intertidal clinid, Muraenoclinus dorsalis Bleeker, 1860, captured from Granger Bay, Kommetjie and Jacobsbaai, South Africa during Summer 2008/2009 and Winter 2009 revealed twenty-three parasitic species. Five myxozoans, all likely new to science, were found to infect M dorsalis. Ceratomyxa sp. and Sphaeromyxa sp. 1 were found in the gall bladder and bile ducts, Kudoa sp. in skeletal muscle, and a Myxobolus sp. on the eyes. Spores of Ortholinea sp. were also detected in gall bladder squashes, but the actual location of infection is unknown. The endoparasite community composition and structure, and their persistence over space and time were also probed. Non-metric multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis and Analysis of Similarity showed that community composition during both summer and winter differed most between Kommetjie and Jacobsbaai, the sites geographically furthest apart. This observation implies a decay in similarity over geographic distance. The endoparasite component communities from Granger Bay showed no significant dissimilarity in composition between summer and winter while the component communities from Kommetjie showed little dissimilarity (Global R: 0.105; p-value = 0.002). These results suggest that season or seasonassociated factors play weak roles at both localities. Contrastingly, the summer and winter component communities from Jacobsbaai showed significant dissimilarity (Global R: 0.201; pvalue = 0.003) because of the higher parasite load in winter. This is attributed to the sheltered nature of Jacobsbaai, where violent winter waves do not disturb the fish but rather push up the tide thereby extending the submergence period of M dorsalis. A longer period of submergence may provide parasites with increased opportunities to infect a host. Nestedness analysesconfirmed a nested subset structure in all component communities, likely a result of differentiated colonization, passive sampling, or a combination of both. This result lends evidence to the theory that parasite community structure is persistent over space and time and that there are laws in parasite ecology.