Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Allocation and impact of depletion'

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Cincinnati, 2005.
Title from electronic thesis title page (viewed Sept. 6, 2007). Includes abstract. Keywords: dual-task; dual task; transition; transitions; demand transition; demand transitions; workload; mental workload; workload transition; workload transitions; task difficulty; tracking; tracking task; vigilance; compensatory tracking; performance; human performance; tracking performance; resource depletion; resource-depletion; mental resources; resource capacity; effort; effort-regulation; effort regulation; stress; transition stress; resource allocation; resource-allocation; human factors. Includes bibliographical references.

An analysis of climate change in Nigeria has been carried out. The aim was to investigate the environmental impact of Green house gases. The three zones of the country namely the extreme North, the middle zone and the extreme South have all been separately examined with respect to changes in solar radiation, temperature, precipitation and evaporation. The agricultural productivity for each zone was compiled, and trend plots over time carried out. Correlation tests were done between productivity and climatic changes and it was found that each zonal area reacted differently to changes in climate. The emission of carbon dioxide, methane and the oxides of nitrogen in Nigeria were calculated and trends plotted. A correlation test was also carried out between carbon dioxide emission and temperature change for each zone. The relationship between temperature change and productivity was shown in a regression model. An economic appraisal for Nigeria involving the GDP, pollution and population was examined in terms of the productivity- pollution index. This was also extended to some of the Western countries

The aim of the current study is to examine the potential parenting factors and mediating mechanisms that lead to ego-depletion within the framework of Self-Determination Theory. Previous research has suggested that whereas behaviourally controlling and autonomy-supportive parenting contributes to the development of autonomous motivation, psychologically controlling parenting leads to introjected motivation for self-regulation. Moreover, recent studies have shown that as compared to introjected regulation, autonomous regulation depletes less ego-resource. Thus, it was expected that parental psychological control positively, but behavioural control negatively, affects ego-depletion via controlled regulation style. In the first study, university students (N = 179) completed three groups of measures assessing parenting behaviours, motivation type of self-regulation, and state self-control capacity. The results of SEM analysis partially supported the proposed mediational model. Whereas both maternal and paternal psychological control indirectly predicted self-control capacity corresponding higher levels of ego depletion via controlled regulation, parental behavioural control did not have direct or indirect effect on self-control capacity. In the second study, the same hypotheses were tested experimentally on a group of participants (N = 91) from the first study by exposing them either an upsetting or a funny video condition that requires emotional control. Results revelaled that perceived high levels of maternal psychological control and low levels of paternal behavioural control make individuals more vulnerable to ego-depletion under emotional control. Furthermore, those with high introjected motivation for emotion-control were relatively resistant to ego-depletion. Findings were discussed considering the practice effect of self-control, implications of diverging parenting behaviours and cultural factors.

CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) binds DNA, thereby helping to partition the mammalian genome into discrete structural and regulatory domains. In doing so, it insulates chromatin and fine-tunes gene activation, repression, and silencing. Complete removal of CTCF from mammalian cells causes catastrophic genomic dysregulation, most likely due to widespread collapse of 3D chromatin looping within the nucleus. In contrast, Ctcf hemizygous mice with lifelong reduction in CTCF expression are viable but have an increased incidence of spontaneous multi-lineage malignancies. In addition, CTCF is mutated in many human cancers and is thus implicated as a tumour suppressor gene. This study aimed to interrogate the genome-wide consequences of a reduced genomic concentration of Ctcf and its implications for carcinogenesis. In a genetically engineered mouse model, Ctcf hemizygous cells showed modest but robust changes in almost a thousand sites of genomic CTCF occupancy; these were enriched for lower affinity binding events with weaker evolutionary conservation across the mouse lineage. Furthermore, several hundred genes concentrated in cancer-related pathways were dysregulated due to changes in transcriptional regulation. Global chromatin structure was preserved but some loop interactions were destabilised, often around differentially expressed genes and their enhancers. Importantly, these transcriptional alterations were also seen in human cancers. These findings were then examined in a hepatocyte-specific mouse model of Ctcf hemizygosity with diethylnitrosamine-induced liver tumours. Ctcf hemizygous mice had a subtle liver-specific phenotype, although the overall tumour burden in Ctcf hemizygous and wild-type mice was the same. Using whole genome sequencing, the highly reproducible mutational signature caused by DEN exposure was characterised, revealing that Braf(V637E), orthologous to BRAF(V600E) in humans, was the predominant oncogenic driver in these liver tumours. Taken together, while Ctcf loss is partially physiologically compensated, chronic CTCF depletion dysregulates gene expression by subtly altering transcriptional regulation. This study also represents the first comprehensive genome-wide and histopathological characterisation of this commonly used liver cancer model.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil Engineering, and (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 1987.
MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING.
Vita.
Bibliography: leaves 134-135.
by Thomas Francis Rossi.
B.S.
M.S.

The body's carnitine pool is almost entirely confined to skeletal muscle where it plays a dual role in cellular energy metabolism. At rest and during moderate intensity exercise, carnitine is an obligatory cofactor in long chain fatty acid metabolism, whereas during intense contraction, carnitine plays a central role in the maintenance of the mitochondrial free Co enzyme A (CoASH) pool. Although carnitine supplementation has been touted as a means to alter skeletal muscle fuel metabolism for several decades, only recently has it been shown that skeletal muscle carnitine availability can be elevated in humans, and that this leads to alterations in muscle fuel metabolism, a finding which has led to renewed interest in carnitine as a regulator of skeletal muscle fuel metabolism. Despite recent developments in our understanding of the physiological impact of skeletal muscle carnitine loading, little is known regarding the metabolic impact of carnitine depletion on skeletal muscle fuel metabolism. The first objective of the work presented in this thesis was to establish a rodent model of skeletal muscle carnitine depletion. This was achieved via oral supplementation with mildronate, a compound which has been shown to attenuate carnitine biogenesis, while also accelerating its renal clearance of carnitine in vivo. Thereafter, the impact of skeletal muscle carnitine depletion on whole body and skeletal muscle fuel metabolism was investigated in non-obese and obese, insulin resistant rodents. Collectively, the experiments detailed in this thesis offer a novel insight regarding the metabolic consequences of skeletal muscle carnitine depletion. More specifically, mildronate administration resulted in a significant reduction in skeletal muscle total carnitine content, which was largely attributable to a near complete depletion of the muscle free carnitine pool. This resulted in a reduction in muscle long chain acylcarnitine content, indicative of impaired carnitine palmitoyl transferase 1 (CPTl) flux and mitochondrial long chain fatty acid transport. Indeed, skeletal muscle carnitine depletion attenuated fat oxidation in both non-obese and obese insulin resistant rodents. In addition to a marked reduction in fat oxidation, carnitine depletion also resulted in an increase in skeletal muscle glycogen utilisation, an effect which was more apparent in obese insulin resistant rodents when compared to non-obese rodents. Interestingly, an additional novel finding of this work was the fact that despite driving skeletal muscle glycogenolysis, skeletal muscle carnitine depletion impaired glucose tolerance in obese insulin resistant rodents. This finding is most likely a result of hepatic lipid accumulation and a subsequent reduction in hepatic insulin sensitivity. Taken together, the data presented in this thesis clearly demonstrates that skeletal muscle carnitine depletion attenuates CPTl flux and fat oxidation while driving skeletal muscle CHO oxidation. However, despite increased glycogenolysis in carnitine depleted skeletal muscle, carnitine depletion does not improve glucose tolerance in obese insulin resistant rodents, and therefore would not be a suitable intervention to manage hyperglycaemia in diabetic subjects.

The aim of the current study was to examine variations in the impact of ambiguous versus blatant race related stressors on ego depletion in a sample of African American adults. Blatant race related stress was compared with ambiguous race related stress in regards to the relative impact on the constructs of ego depletion and perseverative cognition. Perseverative cognition was also examined as a potential mediating variable in the relationship between race related stress and ego depletion. Additionally, attributional ambiguity was hypothesized to moderate the effect of race related stress on perseverative cognition. The study implemented an experimental design, and assessed the integrity of the proposed moderated mediator model in a sample of 159 African American undergraduate students using MANCOVA and hierarchical multiple regression. Analyses failed to detect significant differences in ambiguous versus blatant race related stressors on perseverative cognition or ego depletion, and did not support the proposed model. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.

Insurance companies offer business and individuals the possibility to reduce the financial impact of a risk occurring by transferring it away from themselves onto someone. For taking on risk on behalf of someone else the insurance company requires a premium from the policyholder which is pooled and invested in order to meet future obligations towards the policyholder. However, the importance of the European insurance industry goes beyond economic protection of the policyholder as the industry with its EUR8.4 trillion or 58 percent of EU GDP in assets is the largest institutional investor in Europe. As the financial system has undergone dramatic transformation over time, so have the role and function of intermediaries changed. While traditional tasks like reducing transaction costs and asymmetric information became less relevant, facilitating of risk transfer and dealing with the increasing breadth and depth of financial markets are gaining more and more importance. While insurers have been able to hold illiquid asset to a larger extent arguments from the industry are made that the planned introduction of Solvency II will limit insurers and overlook their investment abilities, which is something that can affect the region’s economic development. The above mention aspect combined with the limited research that has been conducted on insurers’ asset allocation and the performance of it resulted in the following research question: Does asset allocation impact insurance company's performance? The question focuses on insurers within the European Union (EU) which is enlarged by the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, where performance is measured as the return on investment (ROI). To answer the research question in the best possible way, relevant theories such as Modern Portfolio Theory or Efficient Market Hypothesis are presented and discussed as well as previous research on asset allocation. Earlier studies about asset allocation policy and its power to explain the investment return came to different conclusions which can be due to variation in the interpretation of the findings or difficulties by distinguishing between asset allocation policy and active asset allocation. Census is used to investigate in the topic as the population of listed insurance companies within the selected region was rather small which finally came down to 42 firms due to the timeframe of 11 years. Data regarding insurer’s asset class weights in debt securities, equity, real estate, derivatives, cash and equivalent, loans and receivables and the category of others were collected. The return on investment was also collected for each year of the time period and for each insurance company. Benchmarks were constructed in order to replicate what the return of a passive investment of the same proportion would have yielded. The result was inconclusive as it was not possible to determine if asset allocation policy or active management have the greatest impact on the return on investment. This is contradicting previous research of asset allocation and performance as researchers have found that asset allocation policy explains most or all of the return.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Sociology. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Improvement of cyber-security of industrial control systems is of utmost importance for our society. It has been recognized that many security vulnerabilities can be found in these systems, which if exploited may lead to dire consequences. For instance, successful cyber-attacks against industrial control systems may cause loss of electricity, lead to shortage of drinkable water,or disrupt oil and gas production. Deploying security measures to protect industrial control systems may be costly.  Thus, it is expected that we would not be able to prevent all the security vulnerabilities that we find within the systems. In this thesis, we consider two problems related to this issue. The first one is how to determine which combinations of vulnerabilities are the most critical to be prevented. An important part of this classification is estimating the impact of cyber-attacks conducted using these vulnerabilities, which is the first major problem considered in the thesis. The budget for deploying security measures can then be focused on preventing the most critical combinations of vulnerabilities that are found. How to do this in an optimal way once the number of vulnerabilities and measures is large is the second major problem considered. As our first contribution, we outline a framework for estimating the attack impact in industrial control systems. Here, we consider industrial control systems that have both control and monitoring tasks. For industrial control systems with control tasks, we propose a framework to estimate the impact of several attack strategies. We prove that the estimation of the impact of all possible strategies is reducible to solving a set of convex minimization problems. The solvers for convex minimization problems are well known, so the exact value of the attack impact can be obtained easily. For industrial control systems with monitoring tasks, we analyze the impact of a bias injection attack strategy.  We prove that the attack impact can be obtained as the solution of a quadratically constrained quadratic program, for which the exact solution can be found efficiently. We also introduce a lower bound of the attack impact in terms of the number of compromised sensors. The theoretical findings are illustrated in numerical examples. As our second contribution, we propose a flexible modeling framework for allocating security measures. Our framework is suitable for dynamical models of industrial control systems, and can be used in cases when the number of vulnerabilities and measures is large. The advantages of our framework are the following. Firstly, the framework includes an algorithm for efficiently finding the most dangerous vulnerabilities in the system. Secondly, the problem of eliminating these vulnerabilities can provably be casted as a minimization of a linear function subject to a submodular constraint. This implies that the suboptimal solution of the problem, with guaranteed performance, can be found using a fast greedy algorithm. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated through simulations on an industrial control system used for regulating temperature within a building
Att säkerställa och förbättra cybersäkerheten hos industriella styrsystem är av stor vikt för samhällssäkerheten. Det är känt att det förekommer sårbar-heter hos den här typen av system, som om de utnyttjas kan leda till allvarliga konsekvenser. Till exempel kan cyberattacker mot industriella styrsystem leda till storskaliga strömavbrott, dricksvattenbrist och störningar i olje- och gasproduktion. Av dessa skäl har de här problemen fått stor uppmärksamhet inom såväl forskningen som hos myndigheter och industrin. Den här avhandlingen motiveras främst av att de åtgärder som kan vidtas för att skydda industriella styrsystem ofta är kostsamma. I många fall är det därför inte möjligt att åtgärda alla sårbarheter som kan hittas hos systemen. Man behöver därför ta hänsyn till två problem. Till att börja med, hur man kan identifiera vilka sårbarheter, eller kombinationer av dessa, som det är mest kritiskt att förhindra angrepp mot. En viktig del av denna analys är att beräkna effekten av sådana angrepp. Detta problem behandlas i avhandlingens första del. Nästa problem är att fördela en budget för säkerhetsåtgärder för att förebygga de mest kritiska sårbarheterna, vilket behandlas i avhandlingens andra del. Avhandlingens första bidrag är ett ramverk för att bedöma effekten av angrepp mot industriella styrsystem. Här betraktar vi industriella styrsystem som både har till uppgift att reglera och att övervaka. För system med regler-uppgifter föreslår vi ett ramverk för att uppskatta effekterna av flera olika angreppsstrategier. Vi visar att beräkningen av effekten av samtliga strategier kan reduceras till att lösa en uppsättning konvexa minimeringsproblem. Eftersom lösningsalgoritmer för sådana problem är välkända så kan exakta värden enkelt beräknas. För industriella styrsystem med övervakningsuppgifter analyserar vi effekten av angrepp i form av injektion av bias. Vi bevisar attdenna effekt kan fås som lösningen till ett så kallat kvadratiskt programmeringsproblem med kvadratiska bivillkor, som går att lösa exakt på ett effektivt sätt. Vi demonstrerar resultaten i numeriska exempel. Avhandlingens andra bidrag är en flexibel modelleringsmetod för resurs-fördelning av säkerhetsåtgärder. Metoden vi föreslår är lämpad för dynamiska modeller av industriella styrsystem och löser resursfördelningsproblemet när antalet sårbarbeter och åtgärder är stort. Den föreslagna metoden kan effektivt identifiera de farligaste sårbarheterna i systemet. Sedan visar vi hur problemet med att eliminera dessa sårbarheter kan formuleras som en minimering av en linjär funktion med submodulära bivillkor. Detta innebär att man med garanterad prestanda kan hitta en sub otimal lösning med hjälp aven snabb så kallad girig algorithm. Vi demonstrerar att våra metoder går att tillämpa genom simuleringar av ett industriellt temperatur regleringssystem.

QC 20180301

Includes abstract.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-87).
The main objectives of this thesis are to: (i) Map the financing of non-hospital primary health care within local government areas in South Africa; analyse the equity of financing health care in relation to need (iii) and document the process followed at provincial and local government level in decision making around budgeting for non-hospital Public Health Care services.

Budgeting and allocation decisions made by school districts have a direct impact on education in local communities. Little, however, is known about budgetary allocation and decision-making practices involving federal Impact Aid received by military-connected districts as no national guidelines exist to guide the allocation of this funding source. Using Sielke's garbage can decision model as the foundation, the purpose of this multiple case study of 5 school districts located throughout the United States was to explore how school districts use Impact Aid to achieve educational adequateness for military-connected children. Research questions focused on how school districts make budgetary decisions in regard to Impact Aid and military-connected students. Data were collected from 5 semistructured interviews with school administrators, budget analysts, as well as over 350 publicly available policy documents. All data were inductively coded and categorized to apply frequency of references and through open and descriptive coding emerged 4 thematic elements. The key findings of this study showed that sequestration and information management had the largest impact on how Impact Aid funding was spent by school districts. The results of this study provide evidence in support of Sielke's garbage can decision theory. The implications for social change stemming from this study include recommendations to policy makers regarding improving allocation methods, which may in turn improve the effectiveness of education funding leading to adequate and equal education support for all public school students.

This thesis investigates the impact of Solvency II on the asset side of Swedish mutual life insurers. With the help of a quantitative analysis and a qualitative examination of our results we find that there will be a significant change in demand for certain products. A substantial increase in demand for government bonds and interest rate swaps with long maturities should be expected. Furthermore, both corporate and covered bonds will be more attractive investments under the new regulatory framework. Another big impact is the lower risk-adjusted return for equity, which over time will lead to a reduction in Swedish life insurers’ relatively high exposure to equity and equity based products. Furthermore, we conclude that there are large gains to be made by incorporating an optimization with regard to the solvency capital requirements dictated by the legislative texts.
Denna uppsats har undersökt vilken inverkan Solvens II kommer ha på svenska ömsesidiga livbolags tillgångssidor. Med hjälp av en kvantitativ analys och en kvalitativ undersökning av våra resultat har vi funnit att det kommer ske en betydande förändring i efterfrågan av vissa instrument. En stor ökning på efterfrågan av statsobligationer och ränteswappar med långa löptider är att vänta. Dessutom kommer både företags- och säkerställda obligationer vara betydligt mer attraktiva investeringsalternativ under det nya regelverket. En annan stor inverkan är den lägre riskjusterade avkastningen för aktier och aktierelaterade produkter. Över tid kommer detta sannolikt leda till en reduktion av svenska livbolags relativt höga exponering har gentemot aktier. Därutöver finner vi att bolagen har mycket att vinna på att införliva en optimering med avseende på de av regelverket angivna kapitalkraven.

The optimal asset allocation is an ever current matter for investment managers. This thesis aims to investigate the impact of risk parity and target volatility on the Sharpe ratio of a portfolio consisting of futures contracts on equity indices and bonds during the period 2000-2018. In addition, this thesis examines on which level - instrument, asset class or total portfolio level - a momentum strategy has the largest effect. This is done by applying design of experiments. The final result in this thesis finds that risk parity and target volatility improve the Sharpe ratio compared to a classic 60/40 capital allocation. Furthermore, utilising momentum strategies is the most beneficial on the asset class level, i.e. to allocate between equitiy indices and bond futures.
Den optimala tillgångsallokeringen är ett konstant aktuellt ämne. Den här uppsatsen ämnar undersöka effekten av riskviktning och målrisk på Sharpekvoten för en portfölj som handlar terminskontrakt på aktieindex och obligationer mellan 2000 och 2018. Dessutom undersöker denna uppsats på vilken nivå - instrument, tillgångsklass eller total portföljnivå - som en momentumstrategi har störst effekt. Vilket undersöks med statitisk försöksplanering. Det slutgiltiga resultatet i denna uppsats visar att riskviktning och målrisk förbättrar Sharpe-kvoten jämfört med en klassisk 60/40 kapitalallokering. Vidare är nyttjande av momentumstrategier det mest fördelaktiga på tillgångsklassnivå, det vill säga att allokera mellan aktieindex- och obligationsterminskontrakt.

B-Lymphozyten leisten unterschiedliche Beiträge zur Pathophysiologie der Rheumatoiden Arthritis. Sie produzieren Autoantikörper, präsentieren Autoantigene und schütten verschiedene Zytokine, die am proinflammatorischen Prozess beteiligt sind, aus. Aufbauend auf diesen Ergebnissen wurden in den letzten Jahren Therapien entwickelt, die gezielt B-Lymphozyten ansteuern um direkt oder indirekt in den autoimmunen Krankheitsverlauf einzugreifen. Die zeitlich begrenzte B-Zell-Depletion mit Rituximab (anti CD20-Antikörper) hat dabei in den letzten Jahren einen hohen Stellenwert erlangt und wird im klinischen Alltag insbesondere bei der Behandlung von Patienten mit rheumatoider Arthritis angewandt. Rituximab induziert im peripheren Blut bemerkenswerte Veränderungen in der Homöostase der B-Zell-Subpopulationen. Nach Therapie mit dem anti-CD20 Antikörper Rituximab beginnt die Repletionsphase mit der peripheren Aussaat von transitionalen unreifen B-Zellen. Im weiteren Verlauf kommt es zu einer Normalisierung des naiven B-Zell-Pools. Das B-Zell Gedächtnis und in besonderem Maße die IgD+CD27+ Gedächtniszellen erholen sich nach Therapie nur langsam. In einer prospektiven klinischen Studie hat unsere Arbeitsgruppe gezeigt, dass die Gesamtzahl der Gedächtniszellen gut mit der Dauer der klinischen Antwort auf Rituximab korreliert. Es ist wenig über die speziellen molekularen Veränderungen innerhalb der Gedächtnis B-Zellen nach Rituximab Therapie bekannt. Um die Veränderungen im peripheren Blut zu verstehen untersuchten wir die somatische Mutationsfrequenz und das Muster der Ig-VH3 Gen Rearrangements, indem wir prä- und posttherapeutisch bei 18 Patienten einzelne B-Zellen isolierten und den individuellen B-Zellrezeptor durch eine Einzelzell RT-PCR amplifizierten und sequenzierten. Wir verglichen das Mutationsmuster nach erfolgreicher B-Zelldepletion in den neu rezirkulierenden Gedächtnis B-Zellen mit dem Mutationsmuster von vier Gesunden Blutspendern und sechs nicht-RA Patienten, die eine Hochdosis Chemotherapie mit anschließender autologer oder allogener Stammzelltransplantation erhalten hatten. Zunächst haben wir die Zusammensetzung der Gedächtniszellen im peripheren Blut analysiert. Der Phänotyp der peripheren prä-switch (IgD+CD27+) und post-switch (IgD-CD27+) Gedächtniszellen zeigte keine quantitativen Unterschiede in RA-Patienten im Vergleich zu Gesunden. Bei der direkten Analyse des B-Zell Immunglobulin Rezeptors fanden sich jedoch zwischen klassengeswitchten und ungeswitchten Gedächtnis B-Zellen signifikante Unterschiede in der Anzahl der Mutationen in der variablen Region der Ig Rezeptors. Die Population der IgD+CD27+ Gedächtniszellen beinhaltete sowohl nicht mutierte, wenig mutierte und stark mutierte (Median= 9 Mutationen pro Sequenz) rearrangierte Ig- Rezeptoren, wohingegen die IgD-CD27+ Gedächtniszellen einen durchgehend hoch mutierten (Median = 18 Mutationen pro Sequenz) Rezeptor aufwiesen. Der Unterschied zwischen beiden Gruppen war signifikant (Mutationsfrequenzen 3.83±0.19% vs. 7.1±0.53%; P=0.0001). Grundlegende Veränderungen wurden bei den rezirkulierenden ungeswitchten Gedächtniszellen (IgD+CD27+) nach vorübergehender B-Zell Depletion mit Rituximab festgestellt. Diese Zellen wurden bis 6 Jahre nach Rituximab beobachtet und zeigten eine stark verzögerte Zunahme an Mutationen im Ig-Rezeptor. Ein Jahr nach einmaliger Gabe von Rituximab waren 84% der einzelnen zirkulierenden IgD+/CD27+ B-Zellen unmutiert. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt fanden sich keine stark mutierten Ig-VH3 Gen Rearrangements (P=0.0001). Mit zunehmendem Abstand zur B-Zell depletierenden Therapie konnten in der Repopulationsphase zunehmende Zahlen an Mutationen in den B-Zell Ig Rezeptoren festgestellt werden. Beispielsweise waren während des 2. Jahres der Regeneration (P=0.0001) 7.8%, sowie nach 4 Jahren nur 14% der Ig Rezeptoren mutiert. Sogar 6 Jahre nach Behandlung, waren VH Mutationen in IgD+ Gedächtniszellen noch deutlich vermindert. Selbst nach dieser Zeit fanden sich in der prä-switch Gedächtnispopulation nur 27% hochmutierte Sequenzen während vor der passageren B-Zelldepletion 52% ein hohe Zahl an Mutationen trugen (P=0.0001). Die posttherapeutische Analyse der CDR3 Länge der regenerierten IgD+ Gedächtniszellen ergab eine erhöhte CDR3 Länge, die signifikant mit der Anzahl der nicht mutierten VH Genrearrangements während der Repletionsphase korreliert. Interessanterweise regenerierten Patienten nach Hochdosis Chemotherapie und allogener Stammzelltransplantation ihre IgD+ Gedächtniszellen mit einer deutlich höheren Anzahl an Mutationen. Ein Jahr nach Transplantation zeigten die Ig Rezeptoren schon 22% hoch mutierte und 42% unmutierte VH Rearrangements. Das zeigt, dass eine gegen CD20 gerichtete Behandlung nicht nur eine Verzögerung der Produktion der ungeswitchten Gedächtniszellen zur Folge hat, sondern darüber hinaus einen signifikanten Effekt auf die Mutationsrate im präswitch Gedächtnis B-Zellpool besitzt. Im Gegensatz zum Mutationsmuster der IgD+ Gedächtniszellen regenerierten die klassengeswitchten Gedächtniszellen nach anti-CD20 Depletion im peripheren Blut mit quantitativ normalen Mutationen im Ig Rezeptor. Interessanterweise fand sich allerdings eine Änderung der exprimierten Isotypen mit deutlicher Dominanz IgA exprimierender B Zellen. Weitere Analysen der klassengeswitchten Gedächtnis B-Zellen zeigen außerdem eine Therapie induzierte qualitative Veränderung dieses B-Zellpools. So waren posttherapeutisch die Mutationen in bestimmten T-Zell abhängigen Mutationshotspots, dem RGYW/WRCY Motiv, signifikant vermehrt (Mutationstargeting vor Therapie 27% vs. 43% nach Rituximab, P=0.0003). Dies weist darauf hin, dass die Mechanismen der Affinitätsreifung im klassengeswitchten B-Zellgedächtnis vor und nach B-Zelldepletion unterschiedlich funktionieren. Der Mutationsmechanismus selbst ist allerdings in diesen Zellen quantitativ nicht eingeschränkt. Zusammenfassend zeigt unsere Arbeit zum erstem mal, dass es nach einer passageren B-Zelldepletion mit anti-CD20 Antikörpern zu einer über Jahre hinweg nachweisbaren ausgeprägten Verzögerung in der Aquisition von somatischen Mutationen in rearrangierten VH Genen der IgD+ Gedächtniszellen kommt. Demgegenüber erholt sich das klassengeswitchte B-Zellgedächtnis mit uneingeschränkter Zahl von Mutationen im Ig Rezeptor. Diese Resultate zeigen, dass anti-CD20 gerichtete Therapien in besonderem Maße IgD+ Gedächtniszellen beeinflussen. Der Selektionsdruck durch Antigene und/oder die Selektion der Ig Rezeptoren erscheint unter diesen Bedingungen speziell bei IgD-Gedächtnis B-Zellen reduziert. Die Daten unterstützen die Hypothese, dass prä-switch Gedächtnis B-Zellen im Vergleich zu post-switch Gedächtnis B-Zellen andere Bedingungen für die Aktivierung der Mutationsmaschinerie benötigen. Die Resultate eröffnen neue Wege für das Verständnis der Pathophysiologie der B-Zell Gedächtnisentwicklung und können helfen neue zielgerichtete Therapien zur Behandlung von Autoimmunerkrankungen zu konzipieren
Diverse roles of B cells in the pathophysiology of rheumatoid arthritis are now well established. B cells contribute to autoimmunity by producing autoantibodies, processing autoantigen and the production of different cytokines which are involved in the inflammatory cascade. Therefore approaches to target B lymphocytes directly or indirectly are developed for clinical practice to treat autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis. Transient B cell depletion by rituximab (anti-CD20 antibody) has gained prime importance in recent years. Meanwhile anti-CD20 mediated transient B cell depletion therapy is now used with clinical efficiency in the treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Rituximab induces noteworthy changes in the homeostasis of peripheral B cell subpopulations during the repletion phase with emerging immature B cells in peripheral blood followed by normalization of the naïve B cell pool and a longterm delay in memory B cell subsets in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Particularly IgD+CD27+ memory B cells repopulate very slowly during B cell regeneration. In a prospective clinical study, our laboratory has shown that the overall number of memory B cells correlates well to the duration of clinical response to rituximab. Little is known about the particular molecular changes in the memory B cell repertoire after rituximab therapy. To better understand peripheral memory B cell subsets, we explored in detail the somatic mutational frequency and pattern of Ig-VH3 gene rearrangements by using a single B cell sorting technique followed by nested PCR before and up to 6 years after rituximab therapy in 18 RA patients. We compared rituximab inflicted dynamics of mutational acquisition to memory B cell repopulation in 4 healthy donors and 6 non RA patients undergoing high dose chemotherapy followed by autologous or allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT). Firstly we analyzed the peripheral composition of memory B cell subsets. The phenotypic analysis of peripheral pre-switch (IgD+CD27+) and post-switch (IgD-CD27+) memory B cells did not reveal any quantitative differences in RA patients prior to B cell depletion therapy compared to healthy donors. However extending those studies in directly analysing the B cell immunoglobulin receptor from individual B cells of RA patients and healthy controls brought interesting results. Pre-switched and post-switched memory B cells showed a highly significant difference in the amount of mutations/sequence. The population of IgD+CD27+ memory B cells is comprised of non-mutated, low and highly mutated (median= 9 mutations/ sequence) rearranged Ig receptors whereas the IgD-CD27+ memory B cell compartment shows quite uniformly highly mutated (median 18 mutations/ sequence) sequences indicating a significant difference between these two groups (mutational frequencies 3.83±0.19% vs. 7.1±0.53%; P=0.0001). Profound changes were noted in the re-emerging pre-switch memory B cells (IgD+/ CD27+) after transient B cell depletion with rituximab. These cells showed over a time period of 6 years after treatment with rituximab significantly delayed acquisition of mutations in Ig receptors on the single B cell level. One year after a single course of rituximab 84% of single repopulating IgD+/CD27+ B cells were unmutated and no highly mutated Ig-VH gene rearrangements were found(P=0.0001). Over time increasing numbers of mutations could be detected i-e 7.8% during 2nd year of regeneration (P=0.0001), 14% after 4 years (n=2). Nevertheless even 6 years after rituximab, VH mutations in IgD+ memory B cells were still reduced with 27% highly mutated sequences compared to 52% pre therapy(P=0.0001). Post-therapy analysis of CDR3 length of regenerated IgD+ memory B cells revealed increased CDR3 length which also correlates well with elevated number of non-mutated VH gene rearrangements observed during repletion phase. In comparison patients undergoing high dose chemotherapy followed by allogeneic stem cell transplantation repopulated IgD+ memory cells earlier with higher numbers of mutations in IgD+ memory B cells. One year after transplantation Ig receptors showed already 22% highly mutated and 42 % unmutated VH rearrangements. These findings indicated that anti-CD20 mediated B cell depletion seems not only to delay the production of pre-switch memory B cells but also significantly affects the acquisition of mutations in the IgD+ memory B cell pool. In contrary to the mutational pattern of IgD+ memory B cells after rituximab class switched memory B cells repopulate in the periphery with quantitatively normal mutations in their Ig receptors. Although the numeric replenishment of these recirculating class-switched memory B cells was also reduced after rituximab, we found no delay in quantitative acquisition of mutations also an increased proportion of IgA expressing B cells in this memory B cell subset was detected. Our data showed that post-therapy mutational targeting in RGYW/WRCY motifs were significantly increased as compared with that of pre-treatment (27% before rituximab vs. 43% after therapy, P=0.0003) indicating that affinity maturation may operate differently in class-switched memory B cells before and after B cell depletion. These results indicate a normal development process with an unimpaired mechanism of mutational acquisition in class-switched memory B cells. These data argue for different requirements to undergo somatic hypermutations in IgD+ memory B cells in comparison to class switched memory B cells. To conclude, our work has demonstrated for the first time a delayed acquisition of somatic hypermutations at single Ig receptor VH gene rearrangements of IgD+ memory B cells in comparison to class-switched memory B cells. These results demonstrate that IgD+ memory B cells are particularly susceptible to anti-CD20 treatment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. In addition antigenic pressure and/or selection are substantially reduced by rituximab therapy which is basically not seen in the class-switched memory compartment. These data are in line with the hypothesis that IgD+ memory B cells have distinct requirements for activating their mutational machinery compared to class-switched memory B cells which recover normal mutations during regeneration phase. The results have implications in understanding the pathophysiology of memory B cell in rheumatoid arthritis and may be helpful in designing new targeted therapies

The rapid development in renewable generation technologies and flexible distribution networks requires current infrastructure to be modified and developed to adapt high penetration levels of distributed generation. Existing distribution networks were not initially designed and anticipated to accommodate generators on large scale. Short circuit studies ensure the effectiveness of protection equipment settings and coordination is maintained in case of short circuit, despite any additional distributed generation is connected to the distribution network. This research aims to study and compare the different network fault situations for wind energy systems with induction generators, photovoltaic energy systems, and diesel generators connected to distribution networks. The simulation study will be conducted on the existing IEEE case study systems including 13 bus and 30 bus distribution test systems, using ETAP software. Short circuit analysis will be performed twice to include the ANSI/IEEE and the IEC methods for short circuit currents calculation. Simulated results showed that the wind energy systems have significant impact on the short circuit currents, whereas the photovoltaic energy systems are found to have inconsequential effect. The most moderate solution is found to be a distributed generation mix.

This paper deals with the impact of "modern" capital on skill allocation in the European Union (EU) Labour Market for a period from 1996 to 2016. Applying a First-difference methodology on a panel data at the country level from Eurostat, the study finds out that as "modern" capital increases by 1%, low-skill employment decreases by -0.1%.  However, the introduction of new technologies does not affect middle-skill and high-skill employment. Furthermore, "modern" capital/technology does not exhibit any statistically significant impact on working hours, suggesting that the former may affect employment at the extensive margin. The results are in line with Autor et al. (2003) and we may reject the hypothesis of Job Polarisation.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1989.
Title from title page screen, viewed October 24, 2005. Dissertation Committee: John F. Chizmar (chair), Anthony L. Ostrosky, Bernard J. McCarney, Patricia H. Klass, Wilbert M. Leonard. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-124) and abstract. Also available in print.

This thesis provides an empirical indication of how the objectives of official development assistance (ODA), granted by the top five donors, affects the aid policy in the MENA region during the period 1990-2012, and how these objectives have changed during the period 2005-2012. As a first result, alleviation of poverty, commercial interests and the democratic status of the recipient altogether influence aid policy in the region. Recipients’ need and commercial interest are both important objectives for the donors but they have both lost some of its impact in recent times. Historical ties with France affect the aid policy in the region and strategic interests of the donors appear to have an unexpected effect on aid allocation behavior e.g. oil rich countries receive less aid, ceteris paribus. The democratic status of the recipient has a positive significant effect on received aid for the average recipient and the impact has increased with time in the MENA region. Moreover, donors react differently to recipients’ needs, commercial interest and democracy and there are also several differences among recipients with abundant oil resources and those with insignificant oil resources.

The aim of the study was to explore the impact of spatio-temporal variations in demand and alternative-based GIS measures on location–allocation. Location-allocation models are mathematical formulations that seek to optimise facility locations (supply) in relation to the spatial distribution of demand and transport networks. However, there are a number of shortcomings to many location-allocation analyses applied to spatial planning. First, in most analyses the demands that are used as inputs to the models are static. Second, location-allocation models usually fail to incorporate demand trends and most analyses only use the most recent demand estimates. Third, distances separating supply and demand locations have been modelled as 3D, by incorporating variations in elevation or as 2D by assuming that the earth's surface is a continuous plane. This thesis addresses these shortcomings by investigating the impact of these factors on location-allocation decisions making based on different case studies. The first analysis explored the impact of short-term spatio-temporal variations through a case study of EMS location planning in Leicestershire. This was achieved by comparing a residential-based location model, which assumes that demand is static with an alternative location model – the travel-to-work model that incorporates dynamic changes in demand due to journey-to-work. The results of the analysis showed clear differences in both approach, in terms of selected locations, demand allocated to selected locations, Average Weighted Distance (AWD) and demand coverage. In the second analysis, the impact of the long-term spatio-temporal variations in demand was explored through a case study of deriving optimal locations for outreach clinics in Leicester. A trend-weighted approach that incorporates the trajectories of changes in demand was compared with the Non-trend weighted model - a traditional approach that ignores the changing demand trend. The results from the comparative analysis indicated that neglecting demand trend over time, consistently underestimates AWD to selected outreach clinic. This finding suggests that current and future access to outreach clinic may be underestimated, when trends in demand are ignored. Finally, the third analysis compared 2D and 3D distances based on a case study of finding optimal locations for EMS in the hilly areas of South Yorkshire and Sheffield. The results indicated that location-allocation results derived from 3D distance measures are not significantly different from results derived from 2D distance measures. Overall, the finding from the comparative analysis using simulated elevation surfaces, demonstrate that other factors such demand weight distributions and distribution of demand and supply locations influence the outcome of the P-median model. The study concluded that 3D distance is more suited for vehicle routing and allocation problems and siting of Automatic External Defiribilators (AEDs) in building interiors and therefore may not be suitable for location planning in the outdoor environment.

Due to the growing world population, the environmental impact from the food supply chain is currently increasing in a global perspective, essentially because the global food consumption is increasing in general. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that about one third of the edible portions of the food produced globally is lost or wasted along the way from raw materials to the dinner plate. When food is produced, transported, stored, treated and processed in different ways it consumes a lot of resources and energy and causes large negative impact on the environment due to emissions of pollutants affecting waters, soil and air. When food is wasted somewhere in the food supply chain, it implies unnecessary emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants and also entails a pointless extraction and use of natural resources: each since the production is made in vain. Sustainable development has been generally accepted as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Quite simple, this means that humanity of today needs to conserve the remaining resources on Earth and sharply reduce the anthropogenic environmental impact. In order to attain a state where man can live in equilibrium with the natural world,humanity must pursue sustainability in every activity and every movement. According to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) a reduction of food loss within the food supply chain could facilitate society’s quest to develop in a sustainable manner. The retail store is one place where large numbers of food items are gathered at the same location and where a lot of food is discarded, many times completely in vain. It is thus a suitable place to take actions to reduce the foodloss in a quite effective way. In a Swedish retail store located in Uppsala, two product specific measures have been introduced; a new display table intended to reduce the loss bananas and a new price reduction routine intended to reduce the loss of grilled chicken. This thesis aims to investigate whether the measures put in place actually have resulted in reduced losses or not. The goal of the study was to examine how much unnecessary environmental impact (in terms of contribution to global warming) that hence has been avoided. The research questions are studied through a combination of data analyses, interviews and life-cycle assessments. SWOT analyses have also been conducted in order to evaluate the introduced measures in terms of contribution to sustainable development within the food sector. The results of the study concluded that the measure based on price reduction has reduced the losses of grilled chicken with approximately 200 kg per annum. This implies that an annual climate impact of around 430 kgCO2-equivalents has not been caused in vain, which should be the case if the 200 kg of chickens had instead been discarded. The study however shows that the measure is not particularly effective and could be improved in order to further reduce the daily losses. The data analysis show that the banana waste that arises during the exposure in the store has decreased with 1 200 kg per year, implying that around 1 400 CO2-equivalents has not been caused in vain. However, the study also shows that a rather complex system containing economic routines for handling food waste, most likely is wrongly used. Unfortunately, the routines may affect the registered waste outcome from the new display table due to a relocation of the waste from one waste category to another. The new display table’s effect on the total waste quantity is therefore difficult to evaluate. The conducted SWOT-analyses finally concluded that both introduced measures had strong environmental and economic benefits (and also favorable social benefits in the case of the display table), making them good and useful interdisciplinary solutions in terms of sustainability: thus contributing to a sustainable development within the food sector.

Local government is at the forefront of engagement between the government and South Africa’s people, delivering basic services to communities. Following the transition to a democratic government in 1994, the country was demarcated in a manner that provides complete coverage by local government. Annually, managing the administration of service delivery implementation at local government level costs the country many billions. Much of the revenue used by local government in providing services is derived from income from sale of basic services and property rates, augmented by allocations from national and provincial government, equitably shared amongst municipalities. Local government has autonomy in its operations, but is strictly governed by a collection of cascading legislation, introduced to protect the interests of the people. The primary objective of the research was to investigate the efficacy of budget expenditure in local government, in particular the City of Cape Town as a metropolitan municipality. With an annual budget approaching R30 billion, the aim was to establish how the budget was determined and allocated to the service menu provided by the City, and to investigate whether better methods of allocating expenditure could be developed. A mixed research methodology was followed, relying on quantitative methods for analysing survey data statistically, while providing for detailed qualitative methods in interviewing and studying the specific case in detail. The theoretical perspective most suited to this research was found to be that of pragmatism, for its flexibility of interpretation, practicality and space for multiple perspectives. A constructivist epistemology was adopted to provide for the interplay between object and subject in constructing meaning. This research focused on examination of applicable legislation, secondary data in reports, and statistical analysis of opinion surveys of municipal officials involved in budgeting at different levels and interviews with key stakeholders. The findings indicate that budget allocation can be improved upon in a number of ways, despite complying with a myriad of restrictive and onerous regulations applicable to local government. It was found that the administration is fragmented in its operations and that the structure of necessity favours isolated service delivery rather than integration. Further, that compliance impacts negatively on time spent in planning and pursuit of strategic intent to the extent that Reporting often becomes a more important deliverable than basic services. The size of the City hinders common understanding, and introducing any change in political vision requires particular attention.

This study examined the relationships between resource allocation and student achievement using a modified version of a conceptual model designed by Bulcock (1989) within a general model proposed by Guthrie (1988). Five research questions were developed from a review of literature to investigate the relationship between microlevel student input variables and student output variables--both cognitive and affective. The mediating effects of the student perceptions of the quality of school life on student achievement outcomes were also examined. Multiple regression analyses were utilized and data were analyzed at both the individual and school levels. Models were used to investigate the indirect effects of the quality of school life on student achievement outcomes. Substantively meaningful relationships were identified between linguistic resources, language usage and reading outcomes; socioeconomic level, gender, linguistic resources, language usage, and mathematics achievement; gender, student attitudes, and student well-being. All grade eight Newfoundland students (10,146) were the subjects of the study. Participants in the study completed the Canadian Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) and the Bulcock Attitudinal Inventory (BAI). Females scored higher than males on every test of the CTBS and also had more favourable attitudes towards school as measured using the BAI. Urban students outperformed rural students by the equivalent of nearly one year on the CTBS scores. A variable was constructed to test Bernstein's (1961) theory of language discontinuity. Bernstein contended that the further an individual's language code departed from the standard language code in use in that society, the greater the difficulty that person would have in learning. The language code variable was constructed using the language usage score from the CTBS to create a continuous variable. This language code variable proved to be highly explanatory in that it explained a large percentage of the variance in reading achievement outcomes and in mathematics achievement outcomes. The measure for students' perceptions toward their schooling experiences explained a large percentage of the variance of student well-being. Two other noteworthy findings in the present study arose from relationships identified between mathematics achievement and independent variables. A strong relationship was identified between mathematics achievement and socioeconomic level. In general, the higher one's socioeconomic level the greater were the outcome measures in mathematics achievement. Indirect effects analyses produced a significant relationship between gender and mathematics achievement that favoured girls. The construction of the educational production function in the present study proved to be an accurate model. The present study contributed to research in several ways. This is one of the first studies that has employed Quality of School Life indicators as developed in the BAI in an educational production function model. A second contribution was the inclusion of microlevel student linguistic resources as predictors of cognitive achievement outcomes. The third contribution of the present study was the high percentage of variance of cognitive achievement outcomes explained by the modified Bulcock model.

Function as a service (FaaS) is a type of serverless cloud computing intended to facilitate development by abstracting away infrastructural management, and offer a more flexible, pay-as-you-go billing model based on execution time and memory allocation. FaaS functions are deployed to the cloud provider as either single units, or chained to form a pipeline of multiple functions that call each other. As each step in the pipeline might have different requirements, it could be beneficial to split larger functions into smaller parts. This would enable customized provisioning according to each function's needs, and potentially result in a lower rate. However, decreased memory entails a lower CPU performance, which directly correlates to computation time. A test application was created and executed on Google Cloud services to investigate what impact function segregation, and provisioning accommodated to each sub-function requirement, have on end-to-end latency and total cost. In conclusion, no trivial relation between cost and performance was found. Segregating and adjusting provisioning to required memory was in this experiment cheaper in some cases, but not all; however, always significantly slower. In addition to price and workload behavior being considered and balanced, it was found that aspects such as level of control over management and hardware configuration has to be weighed in when deciding if FaaS is a suitable alternative for a given situation.

Taxes are an important component of investing that is commonly overlooked in both the literature and in practice. For example, many understand that taxes will reduce an investment’s return, but less understood is the risk-sharing nature of taxes that also reduces the investment’s risk. This thesis examines how taxes affect the optimal asset allocation and asset location decision in an Australian environment. It advances the model of Horan & Al Zaman (2008), improving the method by which the present value of tax liabilities are calculated, by using an after-tax risk-free discount rate, and incorporating any new or reduced tax liabilities generated into its expected risk and return estimates. The asset allocation problem is examined for a range of different scenarios using Australian parameters, including different risk aversion levels, personal marginal tax rates, investment horizons, borrowing premiums, high or low inflation environments, and different starting cost bases. The findings support the Horan & Al Zaman (2008) conclusion that equities should be held in the taxable account. In fact, these findings are strengthened with most of the efficient frontier maximising equity holdings in the taxable account instead of only half. Furthermore, these findings transfer to the Australian case, where it is found that taxed Australian investors should always invest into equities first through the taxable account before investing in super. However, untaxed Australian investors should invest their equity first through superannuation. With borrowings allowed in the taxable account (no borrowing premium), Australian taxed investors should hold 100% of the superannuation account in the risk-free asset, while undertaking leverage in the taxable account to achieve the desired risk-return. Introducing a borrowing premium decreases the likelihood of holding 100% of super in the risk-free asset for taxable investors. The findings also suggest that the higher the marginal tax rate, the higher the borrowing premium in order to overcome this effect. Finally, as the investor’s marginal tax rate increases, the overall allocation to equities should increase due to the increased risk and return sharing caused by taxation, and in order to achieve the same risk/return level as the lower taxation level, the investor must take on more equity exposure. The investment horizon has a minimal impact on the optimal allocation decision in the absence of factors such as mean reversion and human capital.

The Mediterranean region appears to be particularly responsive to global and climate change, causing decrease in annual river flows and making the region most prone to an increase in drought hazard and water stress. This thesis is an approach to quantify and analyse the water quantity, hydrological ecosystem services and water supply in temperate regions under environmental changes. Hydrological flow and hydrological ecosystem services (water provisioning) models are developed for a low flow Mediterranean river (Francolí river) basin using MIKE BASIN and InVEST respectively. Changes in the delivery of regulating (erosion control) services are also assessed in the heavily humanized Llobregat River basin (NE Spain) considering drivers of climate change (temperature and precipitation). Moreover, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adapted to solve the multi-criteria decision-making problem of alternate water supply for different sectors in Francolí river basin. Climate change have already affected some elements of hydrological ecosystem services and that some are vulnerable in the Mediterranean river basins. Together these effects determine the need of a correct approach for water allocation system and the appropriate alternate water resources at a catchment level due to water scarcity.
Parece ser que la región mediterránea esuna zona particularmente vulnerable al cambio global y climático. Este hecho provoca un descenso en el caudal anual de los ríos y que la zona sea más propensa a un aumento de las sequías y el estrés hídrico. Esta tesis es una aproximación a la cuantificación y el análisis de la cantidad de aguay de los servicios ecosistémicos hidrológicos en regiones templadas bajo cambios ambientales.Se desarrollaron los modelos de caudal hidrológico y servicios ecosistémicos hidrológicos (aprovisionamiento de agua) para una cuenca de río mediterráneo de bajo caudal (río Francolí) utilizando MIKE BASIN e InVEST respectivamente. También se evaluaron los cambios en el subministro del serviciode regulación (control de la erosión) en la cuenca del río Llobregat (NE de España), la cual está fuertemente humanizada, considerando los impactos del cambio climático (temperatura y precipitación). Además, se adaptó el Proceso Jerárquico Analítco (PJA) para solucionar el problema de la alternativa de disponibilidad de agua para diferentes sectores en la cuenca del río Francolí según múltiples criterios de decisión. El cambio climático ya ha causado impactosen algunos elementos de los servicios ecosistémicos hidrológicos que son vulnerables en las cuencas de ríos mediterráneos. Todos estosimpactos determinan que, debido a la escasez de agua, sea necesario un enfoque correcto para el sistema de asignación de agua y los recursos hídricos alternativos apropiados a nivel de cuenca.

Recent educational reforms in Hong Kong aimed to increase choice, diversity and quality of education for everyone. The advocates of school-choice policies claim that more choice is good because it is ‘classless’ and fairer than planned provision (Chubb & Moe, 1990). Everyone has the chance to choose and to decide upon the best providers of goods and services to meet their needs. However, opponents (Gewirtz, Ball & Bowe, 1995) argue that social and cultural capitals may play an important role in choice-making. They conclude that choice is very directly and powerfully related to social class and that ‘choice emerges as a major new factor in maintaining and indeed reinforcing social-class divisions and inequalities’ (ibid: 55). All such literature prompts the question: what are the main effects of the new school choice policy implemented in Hong Kong in 2001? The focus of this research is, therefore, to investigate the early impact of the new school choice policy in Hong Kong and the reactions of parents and schools. In this thesis, I have employed a multi-method research strategy which includes case studies of fours schools, a questionnaire survey of 905 parents and interviews with parents, school managers and policy-makers in order to investigate the early impact of the new secondary school choice (SSPA) policy in Hong Kong. I examined how parents engaged in choosing schools and the subsequent consequences of the policy for the key stakeholders – consumers and providers. The richness of the data reveals the equality issues inherent in the choice process in the unique choice situation in Hong Kong.

Following the rapid development of mobile infrastructure and hand-held user devices like smartphones and tablets, the way that mobile networks have been utilized has changed accordingly. Users are no longer using their phones just to talk to and message each other, but have migrated most of their multimedia consumption to these devices. The increased network strain and reduced profit margins that new services bring to the table might lead to future decoupling between revenues and expenses in the network. In order to avoid this scenario various different strategies have been proposed and one of them is introduction of QoS/QoE related resource allocation techniques. This thesis looks at Interruption Prediction scheduler which tries to predict and prevent audio or video interruptions experienced during video conference call. In order to test the performance of these schedulers, MATLAB simulator reusing some of the functions from RUNE toolbox has been used. Results of the newly presented algorithms are compared with a QoE/QoS agnostic scheduler. Unfortunately results of these schedulers in the case of video conference are not as promising as they were in the case of some other types of services. The research done shows that these modifications of the scheduling algorithms do not help to increase the network performance in terms of observed KPIs (Total Time of Interruptions, Frequency of Interruptions and network throughput) in most of the described scenarios. However, there are some special scenarios when these schedulers show a certain potential.

Previous research on grazing behavior has shown that ruminants will select a mixed diet. The use of adjacent monocultures is an essential tool for determining dietary preference of forages. Much of the work to date has been conducted with white clover (Trifolium repens L.) and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). Partial preference for white clover over ryegrass has been reported consistently and partial preference for legumes is thought to occur regardless of the legume and grass species being evaluated. Two forage species, tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb. or Lolium arundinaceum (Schreb.) S.J. Darbyshire) and alfalfa (Medicago sativa subsp. sativa L.), which had not been evaluated together previously as adjacent monocultures were grazed by beef steers in the present set of experiments. Steers exhibited a partial preference for alfalfa of 61 to 65% when given a choice of grazing alfalfa or tall fescue as adjacent monocultures, regardless of the ground area proportion of the two forages offered. Steers grazing tall fescue monocultures spent more time ruminating (P = 0.02) and tended to graze less time (P = 0.06) than steers in adjacent monoculture treatments. Time spent idling, number of prehensions and mastications, and bite rate were similar (P > 0.05) among treatments. Steers grazing tall fescue monocultures spent less time standing, more time lying, were less active and took fewer steps (P â ¤ 0.05) than steers in adjacent monoculture treatments. Grazing behavior was examined when alfalfa had not been in the previous diet of the steers. Cattle without previous experience grazing alfalfa spent 78% of the time grazing alfalfa, whereas after having experience grazing it they spent a lower (P = 0.04) proportion of their time grazing alfalfa (72%). Overall proportion of the day spent grazing both forages was lower (P = 0.0001) when alfalfa was novel (40%), compared to when steers were experienced grazing both forages (46%). Proportion of the day spent idling was greater (P < 0.0001) when alfalfa was novel (35%), compared to when both forages were familiar to the steers (26%). Previous research has reported that ruminants exhibit a diurnal pattern of preference by decreasing the proportion of white clover consumed from morning to late afternoon while increasing the proportion of perennial ryegrass in the diet. This is thought to be a strategy to increase fiber intake before nightfall or as a response to higher carbohydrate levels in grass in the afternoon. In the present study, proportion of grazing time in alfalfa was higher (P = 0.02) in the afternoon (76.8 %) than in the morning (72.1 %). While fiber concentration was higher in the tall fescue, carbohydrate concentrations were similar. Steers were not attempting to increase fiber intake in the afternoon in the present study. Dry matter intake of steers grazing adjacent monocultures of alfalfa and tall fescue was estimated with n-alkanes. Diet composition was estimated using n-alkanes and long chain alcohols (LCOH) in several different combinations. The use of LCOH added additional characterization of the forages, but diet composition estimates were not different (P â ¥ 0.22) than when estimated using four different n-alkanes. Laboratory analysis costs may be reduced if n-alkanes alone can adequately characterize the forages being consumed, depending on the forage species in question. Meteorological conditions impacted DMI with intake being less in hotter conditions. Steers had similar partial preferences for alfalfa over tall fescue (P = 0.13, 79% and 70% alfalfa in yr 1 and 2, respectively) even though total DMI differed between years (P = 0.002, 9.4 kg d-1 and 4.5 kg d-1 in yr 1 and 2, respectively). Lower DMI in yr 2 was attributed to hotter air temperatures. When animals are consuming two different forages as adjacent monocultures such as in the current experiments, it is important to determine the proportion of each forage in the diet before calculating DMI using odd chain n-alkanes of the forage along with a dose even chained n-alkane. Dry matter intake can be overestimated if the proportion of the forages consumed is not estimated and accounted for in the equation. This would apply to other studies utilizing mixed swards or any diet containing multiple components that differ in concentration of the n-alkane being used for DMI estimation. Analysis of n-alkane concentration should be performed on each item in the diet and the proportion of each item in the diet estimated so that the right value can be used in the calculation. Differences in marker concentrations between years also indicate the importance of analyzing those concentrations in the feed or forage at the time of fecal collection and not using values reported from previous research.
Ph. D.

Energy policies in favor of a larger adoption of renewable energy sources for electricity production purposes and the significant progress of several renewable technologies are among the main drivers behind an increasing integration of distributed generation (DG) in distribution networks. DG affects distribution network planning and operation and, consequently, higher or lower network costs than in a traditional passive network scenario arise. Two main complementary tools for an efficient integration of DG have been identified in this thesis: (i) a sound economic regulation of Distribution System Operators (DSOs) for taking into account DG-driven potential costs and accordingly remunerating DSOs, and (ii) network tariff design, in order to allocate network costs and re-distribute potential benefits to different grid users. Distribution economic regulations vary from country to country with grid characteristics and regulatory customs. In order for Regulators to promote the integration of DG units according to policy objectives, the potential impact of DG on the different distribution costs needs to be analyzed and quantitatively assessed: in this thesis, these objectives are achieved by using a novel model that combines the technical characteristics of distribution grids with the regulatory details specific of each regulation. Once computed, DSOs' total allowed revenue is allocated to different users' categories according to the adopted tariff structures. This thesis focuses on the challenges arising within the traditional paradigm of distribution tariff design when an increasing amount of DG is connected to the grids. In particular, the consequences of DG exemption from distribution tariffs and the application of load-tailored tariff schemes to DG are investigated, both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view; cross subsidies between consumers and DG owners are computed by applying a cost causality principle.

The Doctoral Degrees issued upon completion of the programme are issued by Comillas Pontifical University, Delft University of Technology and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The invested degrees are official in Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden, respectively. QC 20151009

Cette thèse étudie l'impact de l'interférence résiduelle d'un système CDMA comme l'UMTS sur la couverture et la capacité du réseau. L'interférence résiduelle dépend des propriétés des codes d'étalement utilisés et des techniques de réception choisies. Plusieurs procédures complémentaires sont mises en œuvre dans le système pour contrôler le niveau d'interférence créée: contrôle de puissance, contrôle d'admission et allocation de ressources. La première partie de la thèse est focalisée sur les techniques de réception. Deux familles de récepteurs sont étudiées et comparées en terme de performances: les récepteurs à corrélation (récepteur RAKE) et les récepteurs linéaires en bloc multi-utilisateurs. Différentes approches pour l'évaluation des performances des récepteurs ont été analysées et comparées: le calcul exact, le calcul approché basé aussi bien sur le modèle gaussien des interférences que sur le développement en série de Taylor de la probabilité moyenne de l'erreur et le calcul asymptotique pour des grands facteurs d'étalement. La complexité de mise en œuvre des algorithmes de réception est aussi discutée. Nous avons proposé un récepteur linéaire en bloc sous-optimal basé sur un découpage du traitement en sous-blocs. Le compromis entre complexité et performance de cet algorithme a été optimisé. A fin d'évaluer l'influence du choix du récepteur sur les autres procédures mises en œuvre au niveau système, la deuxième partie est consacrée à l'analyse et la modélisation des interférences en sortie d'un récepteur RAKE ou d'un récepteur linéaire en bloc. La validité du modèle gaussien qui présente beaucoup d'avantages, a été discutée dans deux cas extrêmes: codes courts et périodiques et codes longs et aléatoires. La prise en compte d'un modèle d'interférence avec différents niveaux de simplification a été introduit dans des quelques exemples d'études système: contrôle d'admission et allocation des codes, contrôle de puissance, compromis entre couverture et capacité
This thesis analyses the impact of residual interference of a CDMA system such as UMTS on the coverage and capacity of the network. The residual interference depends on the spreading code properties and also on the chosen receiver technique. Several complementary procedures are mounted in the system level in order to control the interference level: power control, admission control and resource allocation. The first part of the thesis is focused on the receiver techniques. Two receiver families are studied and compared in terms of performance: the correlation receivers (RAKE receiver) and the multiuser bloc linear receivers. Different approaches for performance evaluation of the receivers are analysed and compared: exact calculus, approximate calculus based either on the gaussian model of interference or approximate based on the development of the mean error probability in Taylor series and the asymptotic evaluation for systems with great spreading factors. The complexity of implementation of the receiver has also been considered. We proposed a linear bloc-sub-optimal receiver based on splitting the processing in sub blocs. The tradeoff between complexity and performances of such a receiver has been optimised. In order to evaluate the impact of the receiver choice on the other procedures mounted in the system level, the second part is focused on the analysis of the interference at the output of a RAKE receiver or a bloc linear receiver. The goodness of the gaussian model, which presents a lot of advantages, has been discussed. The interference model has been taken into consideration with different level of simplifications and introduced in some system study examples: call admission and code allocation, power allocation, and the resulting tradeoff between coverage and capacity

A cause de l’actuel déclin mondial de la biodiversité, la compréhension des conséquences de chaque menace sur la biodiversité est un élément crucial en biologie de la conservation. Les espèces exotiques envahissantes représentent une de ces menaces à l’échelle mondiale, et peuvent induire localement des dommages au sein des écosystèmes. Etudier les phénomènes régissant les effets négatifs de ces espèces, et leurs potentiels d’expansion apparaît actuellement comme un élément crucial pour déterminer leurs effets sur le long terme. Dans cette étude, nous focalisons nos efforts sur une population exotique envahissante du Xénope lisse, Xenopus laevis, en France, pour apporter de nouvelles connaissances sur les interactions de cette population avec son environnement et pour étudier les changement dans l’allocation des ressources aux traits d’histoire de vie liés à la reproduction la survie et la dispersion durant l’expansion de l’aire de répartition. Nous étudions le régime alimentaire de l’espèce en France et dans d’autres populations introduites et autochtones et concluons que cette espèce peut étendre sa répartition en consommer une faible, comme une importante diversité de proies. Nous détectons également un potentiel impact de l’espèce sur les amphibiens autochtones de France. Dans la seconde section de la thèse, nous rapportons une réduction de l’allocation des ressources à la reproduction et une augmentation de la dispersion, sur le front de colonisation. Enfin, nous étudions la dynamique des populations et détectons une faible probabilité de survie, et une faible densité en individus dans le centre de l’aire de répartition. La combinaison de ces résultats suggère que les potentiels effets négatifs sur le long terme sont importants pour cette espèce, en France, tout comme dans d’autres zones où l’espèce a été, ou sera, introduite
Because of the current global biodiversity decline, understanding the consequences of each threat on biodiversity is crucial for conservation biology. Invasive species are among the main threats at the global scale, and can locally imply harmful damages on ecosystems. Studying the phenomena driving the effects and potential for expansion of these species appears as a crucial element to assess their long terms impacts. In this study, we focused our efforts on an invasive population of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, in France, to bring insight about the interactions of this population with its environment and to study the changes in resource allocation to the life history traits, related to reproduction, survival and dispersal probabilities, during the range expansion of the population. We studied the diet in the French invasive population and in other invasive and native populations, and found that this species can expand by predating a narrow, as well as a broad, range of prey categories. We also detected an impact of X. laevis on the native amphibian community in France. In the second section of the thesis, we reported a decrease in reproductive investment, and an increased dispersal allocation of resources at the range edge. We finally studied population dynamics and detected a lower survival probability and density at the range core. All these results combined suggest that the potential for long term impacts is important in France for X. laevis as well as in other areas where the species has been, or will be, introduced