Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Descriptive methods'

Using mathematical models with the purpose to understand and store knowlegde about a system is not a new field in science with early contributions dated back to, e.g., Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

The aim is to obtain such a comprehensive predictive and quantitative knowledge about a phenomenon so that mathematical expressions or models can be used to forecast every relevant detail about that phenomenon. Such models can be used for reducing pollutions from car engines; prevent aviation incidents; or developing new therapeutic drugs. Models used to forecast, or predict, the behavior of a system are refered to predictive models. For such, the estimation problem aims to find one model and is well known and can be handeled by using standard methods for global nonlinear optimization.

Descriptive models are used to obtain and store quantitative knowledge of system. Estimation of descriptive models has not been much described by the literature so far; instead the methods used for predictive models have beed applied. Rather than finding one particular model, the parameter estimation for descriptive models aims to find every model that contains descriptive information about the system. Thus, the parameter estimation problem for descriptive models can not be stated as a standard optimization problem.

The main objective for this thesis is to propose methods for estimation of descriptive models. This is made by using methods for nonlinear optimization including both new and existing theory.

Injury now surpasses disease as the leading global cause of premature death and disability, claiming over 5.8 millions lives each year. However, unlike disease, which has been subjected to a rigorous epidemiologic approach, the field of injury prevention and control has been a relative newcomer to scientific investigation. With the distribution of injury now well described (i.e. ???who???, ???what???, ???where??? and ???when???), the underlying hypothesis is that progress in understanding ???how??? and ???why??? lies in classifying injury occurrences aetiologically. The advancement of a means of classifying injury aetiology has so far been inhibited by two related limitations: 1. Structural limitation: The absence of a cohesive and validated aetiological taxonomy for injury, and; 2. Methodological limitation: The need to manually classify large numbers of injury cases to determine aetiological patterns. This work is directed at overcoming these impediments to injury research. An aetiological taxonomy for injury was developed consistent with epidemiologic principles, along with clear conventions and a defined three-tier hierarchical structure. Validation testing revealed that the taxonomy could be applied with a high degree of accuracy (coder/gold standard agreement was 92.5-95.0%), and with high inter- and intra- coder reliability (93.0-96.3% and 93.5-96.3%). Practical application demonstrated the emergence of strong aetiological patterns which provided insight into causative sequences leading to injury, and led to the identification of effective control measures to reduce injury frequency and severity. However, limitations related to the inefficient and error-prone manual classification process (i.e. average 4.75 minute/case processing time and 5.0-7.5% error rate), revealed the need for an automated approach. To overcome these limitations, a knowledge acquisition (KA) software tool was developed, tested and applied, based on an expertsystems technique known as ripple down rules (RDR). It was found that the KA system was able acquire tacit knowledge from a human expert and apply learned rules to efficiently and accurately classify large numbers of injury cases. Ultimately, coding error rates dropped to 3.1%, which, along with an average 2.50 minute processing time, compared favourably with results from manual classification. As such, the developed taxonomy and KA tool offer significant advantages to injury researchers who have a need to deduce useful patterns from injury data and test hypotheses regarding causation and prevention.

This mixed methods research study describes the implementation of Applied Science and Technology (AST) - a recently-implemented Secondary 3 and 4 program in Quebec. AST is part of the Math, Science and Technology Domain of the Quebec Education Program (QEP), a comprehensive reform of the K-11 Quebec curriculum. It is very different from the science programs of the past. AST teaches science by emphasizing the applications of science and technology in the real world of the students. The program uses the pedagogy of constructivism and integrates engineering technology into the science content.This study examines the extent to which teachers follow the AST curriculum and use a constructivist/inquiry-based pedagogy. It also described the students' engagement with the program and their motivation and interest in learning science. Quantitative data were collected from online surveys of AST teachers and students as well as school board enrolment figures. Qualitative data came from extensive visits to AST classrooms in action and interviews with teachers, principals and science consultants. The data were triangulated to arrive at a comprehensive description of the implementation of AST. The study examines the teachers' epistemology with relation to the AST curriculum. It found that many teachers, with support from consultants and new science teaching resources, are successfully incorporating applications of science and engineering technology as prescribed by AST. They are using some constructivist pedagogical practices – accessing prior knowledge, providing an active learning environment and contextualizing the content within the students' reality. Some teachers, on the other hand, are finding it quite challenging to fully incorporate the technology aspect of the curriculum and the constructivist nature of the pedagogy. Students show strong motivation to learn science and express satisfaction with their experiences in AST when the AST activities are hands-on, have personal meaning and give them a measure of autonomy and challenge.
Cette étude de méthodes mixtes décrit la mise en œuvre du programme d'applications technologiques et scientifiques (ATS) qui a été récemment mis en œuvre au Québec en Secondaire 3 et 4. ATS fait partie du domaine de la mathématique, de la science et de la technologie du Programme de formation de l'école québécoise, une réforme globale au Québec. Il est très différent des programmes scientifiques du passé. ATS enseigne la science en mettant l'accent sur les applications de la science et de la technologie dans le monde réel des élèves. Le programme utilise la pédagogie du constructivisme et intègre la technologie d'ingénierie dans le contenu scientifique. L'étude a examiné l'épistémologie des enseignants par rapport au programme ATS. Elle a aussi examiné la mesure dans laquelle les enseignants et enseignantes suivaient le programme de l'ATS et utilisaient la pédagogie du constructivisme. Il a également décrit l'engagement des étudiants avec le programme et leur motivation et leur intérêt pour l'apprentissage des sciences. Les données quantitatives ont été recueillies à partir des sondages en ligne des enseignants et des étudiants de l'ATS ainsi que des chiffres d'inscription des commissions scolaires. Les données qualitatives proviennent de plusieurs visites dans les classes d'ATS en action et des entrevues avec des enseignants et enseignantes, des directeurs et directrices d'école et des conseillers et conseillères pédagogiques. Les données ont été triangulées pour arriver à une description exhaustive de la mise en œuvre de l'ATS. L'étude a révélé que les enseignants, avec l'appui des conseillers pédagogiques et de nouvelles ressources d'enseignement des sciences, incorporent avec succès les applications de la technologie et de l'ingénierie tel que prescrit par l'ATS. Ils utilisent certaines pratiques pédagogiques constructivistes - accéder à la connaissance préalable, fournir un environnement d'apprentissage actif et mettre en contexte le contenu dans la réalité des élèves. Certains enseignants et enseignantes, d'autre part, trouvent qu'il est très difficile d'intégrer pleinement l'aspect technologique du programme et la nature constructiviste de la pédagogie. Les élèves montrent une forte motivation pour apprendre la science et se disent satisfaits de leur expérience dans l'ATS lorsque les activités sont pratiques, ont une signification personnelle et leur donnent un certain niveau d'autonomie et défi.

Keystone Science School (KSS) is a residential outdoor education facility set high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Initially as a classroom teacher in a nearby town, I observed first-hand the positive impact of experiences had by my students at KSS on their attitudes toward learning science. This research was designed as a descriptive study to analyze how KSS uses outdoor methods and strategies to positively effect student attitudes toward learning science. Over the course of several weeks, participating students and teachers were surveyed about their experiences (typically 3-day/2-night) at Keystone Science School. Instructors and field groups were also observed on several occasions to analyze the degree to which particular methods and strategies were being employed, and their effectiveness on student interest and engagement in science. The results suggest that with an overwhelming positive view from students and teachers about the effectiveness of their outdoor learning experiences, student age, student gender, and instructor gender had some effect on these attitudes. Boys tended to be slightly more comfortable learning outdoors than girls, and younger students (ages 9-11) generally more comfortable than older students (ages 12-14) especially among girls. Students also reported being slightly more comfortable learning outdoors with male instructors, and tended to rate the abilities of male instructors slightly higher. The findings of this result support the conclusion that methods and strategies used in outdoor education are more effective at developing positive attitudes toward learning science than typical classroom experiences.

This study presents the specific problem surrounding the lack of empirical research for improving engagement and ongoing supervision between criminal justice practitioners and offenders. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive single-case study dissertation aimed to investigate job roles and social contact for improvement of engagement with special needs federal offenders in community corrections. This study used a descriptive framework comprised of, education, training, and leadership and management as a special interest. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews used a purposeful and snowball approach. The participants were 10 criminal justice practitioners, five Case Managers and five United States Probation Officers that provide transitional services to the federal offenders with special needs. Three themes emerged based on the participant’s perceptions and experiences regarding job roles and social contacts with offenders. The themes were as follows: (a) managing offenders and professionalism, (b) influence of education and training, and (c) setting the tone and culture of the organization. The research discovered that a professional rapport is essential for engaging offenders. This study discovered the ramifications of communicating expectations of transitioning into society and its impact on recidivism. Further implications for leadership to consider based on this study is a need for a comprehensive approach for how to properly mange offenders with special needs. Recommendations for seeking appropriate means for offering professional development opportunities for all practitioners in community corrections is proposed to correctional leaders.

This descriptive, non-experimental, quantitative study was designed to answer the broad question, “What do grades mean?” Core academic subject middle school teachers from one large, suburban school district in Virginia were administered an electronic survey that asked them to report on aspects of their grading practices and assessment methods for one class taught during the 2008-2009 school year. The survey addressed the following topics: 1) primary purposes for grades, 2) attitudes toward grading, 3) assessment method, and 4) grading practices. Additionally, the study examined the relationship between teachers’ reported assessment and grading methods and student achievement. Overall results and results disaggregated by subject area, grade level, and student ability level suggest that teachers are consistent in what they consider the primary purposes for grades. The vast majority indicated that grades should communicate student levels of mastery of content and skills. However, sizable percentages of teachers reported that they also considered non-academic indicators such as effort, attendance, and paying attention in class when determining student grades, suggesting a lack of alignment between their reported beliefs and practice. The study examined the extent to which teachers’ reported grading and assessment practices were consistent with those recommended in the literature on measurement and assessment. The study findings are consistent with those of findings from previous studies suggesting that teachers engage in “hodgepodge grading,” a practice which incorporates non-academic factors into student grades. The results also show that teachers use a variety of assessment methods and types of questions when measuring student achievement. The results indicate that projects, student exhibits, essays, inclusion of zeros, and extra credit were associated with higher levels of student achievement. Conversely, norm-referencing, classwork, participation, and matching were negatively correlated with student grades and test scores.

Sanitation marketing is an emerging approach of strengthening the local private sector to implement scalable and sustainable improved sanitation coverage in developing countries, specifically among the poor. It encourages the enhancement of sanitation market supply and demand by developing distribution infrastructure and stimulating consumer interest. Unlike interventions that provide hardware subsidies to initiate sanitation demand, financial support for sanitation marketing is used exclusively for the research and development of the market; this encourages the private sector to become independent and self-sufficient. Qualitative data suggests that while sanitation marketing projects have been successful at implementing replicable and sustainable sanitation coverage, they are not effective in close proximity to other programs that provide hardware subsidies. The aim of this study is to determine how hardware subsidies impacted iDE’s (formerly International Development Enterprise) Cambodia Sanitation Marketing Scale-Up (SMSU) project using quantitative data collected between 2010 and 2014, and to develop an approach that best illustrates this relationship. Using their project database of 48,844 transactions in 9 provinces, QGIS 2.8.1 and MS Excel were used to determine the correlations between the NGO (subsidized) and customer sales. QGIS maps and time-lapse animations were effective in spatially juxtaposing the quantity and location of both NGO and customer sales, and MS Excel charts quantified the relationship as a function of time, identifying opposing correlational patterns. Within the Cambodia SMSU project, the provision of hardware subsidies (represented by NGO sales) resulted in the attrition of the sanitation marketplace (represented by customer sales) when the NGO sales landed between 71 and 889 in a single month, averaging 400 NGO sales in a month. Overall, 14 districts showed decreased customer sales in the presence of subsidies, and 36 districts showed increased customer sales in the presence of subsidies. Within this study, any district with over 395 sales in one month showed a decline in customer sales. There were 106 months within this project that the NGO and customer sales had a positive correlation and 110 months showing a negative correlation.

L’épidémiologie de terrain peut être définie comme un ensemble de méthodes de collecte et de traitement de l’information combinant successivement les approches de l’épidémiologie descriptive mais aussi celles de l’épidémiologie analytique. La finalité de l’analyse descriptive sera de décrire et de quantifier la survenue du phénomène étudié dans une population donnée, permettant ainsi la formulation d’hypothèses préalables à la phase analytique. Phase, qui se focalisera sur les "associations" entre des "facteurs de risque" et la survenue du phénomène étudié. Dans la réponse aux questionnements posés ces deux phases les méthodes statistiques seront des outils incontournables. Afin que les résultats produits par ces analyses soient non seulement utiles mais aussi valables et utilisables, une bonne identification et une application adéquate des méthodes d’analyse s’avèreront primordiales.

A côté de ce constat méthodologique, il y a, dans le champ des traumatismes, tant en Belgique, qu’en pays en développement, la quasi absence d’informations pertinentes et rigoureuses pour documenter l’importance de cette problématique dans le champ de la santé. Pourtant, selon l’Organisation Mondiale de la Santé, plus de 5 millions de personnes décèdent des suites d’un traumatisme chaque année, avec 90% de ces décès survenant dans les pays à faible revenu ou à revenu intermédiaire. En Europe, les données montrent qu’une personne décède toutes les deux minutes des suites d’un traumatisme, et que pour chaque citoyen européen qui en meure, 25 personnes sont admises à l’hôpital, 145 sont traitées en ambulatoire et plus encore se font soigner ailleurs.

Au vu du double constat, qui est, d’une part, que les méthodes statistiques ne sont pas toujours exploitées correctement, et d’autre part, qu’il y a un manque d’informations appropriées et rigoureuses pour documenter l’ampleur du problème des traumatismes; ce travail de thèse poursuit l’objectif majeur, de montrer l’intérêt qu’il y a à appliquer de manière pertinente, adéquate et complète, des méthodes statistiques (univariées, multivariables et multivariées) adaptées aux différentes sources de données disponibles, afin de documenter l’importance des traumatismes, et des facteurs qui y sont associés, tant en pays industrialisés (exemple de la Belgique) qu’en pays en développement (exemple du Cameroun).

La partie classiquement appelée "résultats", correspond dans ce travail à deux chapitres distincts. Le premier fait la synthèse de ce qui a été objectivé par la revue de la littérature en termes de sources de données exploitées et de méthodes d’analyse statistique utilisées. Le second correspond à l’exploitation de quatre bases de données :une "généraliste et populationnelle" (First Health of Young People Survey - Cameroun), une "généraliste et hospitalière" (Résumé Hospitalier Minimum - Belgique), une "spécifique et populationnelle" (données issue de compagnies d’assurances belges), et une " spécifique et hospitalière" (Service SOS Enfants du CHU St Pierre - Belgique).

Les constats majeurs à l’issue de ce travail sont qu’il est possible de trouver dans le panel des méthodes statistiques "classiques", les méthodes nécessaires pour répondre aux questionnements de surveillance "en routine" en termes d’occurrence et de facteurs associés. L’accent devrait être mis sur une (meilleure) utilisation (justifiée, correcte et complète) de ces méthodes et sur une meilleure présentation (plus complète) des résultats. L’utilisation adéquate s’assurant d’une part, par une meilleure formation en méthodologie statistique pour les praticiens mais aussi par l’intégration, à part entière, des statisticiens dans les équipes de recherches. En ce qui concerne les sources de données utilisées, le potentiel d’information existe. Chaque source de données a ses avantages et ses inconvénients mais utilisées conjointement elles permettent d’avoir une vision plus globale du fardeau des traumatismes. L’accent devrait être mis sur l’amélioration de la disponibilité, la mise en commun mais aussi sur la qualité des données qui seraient disponibles. Dès lors, en vue de s’intégrer dans une dynamique de "Système de Surveillance des Traumatismes", une réflexion sur une utilisation globale (qu’elle soit couplée ou non) de ces différentes sources de données devrait être menée.

En Belgique, de nombreuses données, contenant de l’information sur les traumatismes, sont collectées en routine, au travers des données hospitalières, et ponctuellement, au travers de données d’enquêtes. Actuellement, ces données, dont la qualité reste discutable pour certaines, sont sous-utilisées dans le champ qui nous intéresse. Dans le futur, "plutôt que de ne rien savoir", il est important de continuer à exploiter l’existant pour produire et diffuser de l’information, mais cette exploitation et cette diffusion doivent s’accompagner non seulement de réflexion mais aussi d’action sur la qualité des données. En ce qui concerne l’utilisation des méthodes statistiques, nous préconisons une double approche :l’intégration et la formation. Par intégration, nous entendons le fait qu’il faut d’une part considérer le statisticien comme un professionnel ayant à la fois des compétences techniques pointues sur les méthodes, qui pourront être mises à disposition pour garantir le bon déroulement de la collecte et de l’analyse des données, mais aussi comme un chercheur capable de s’intéresser plus spécifiquement à des problématiques de santé publique, comme la problématique des traumatismes par exemple. Par formation, nous entendons le fait qu’il est essentiel d’augmenter et/ou de parfaire non seulement les connaissances des futurs professionnels de la santé (publique) en cours de formation mais aussi celles des praticiens déjà actifs sur le terrain et dès lors premiers acteurs de la collecte de l’information et de son utilisation dans une démarche de prise de décision, de détermination de priorité d’action et d’évaluation.

L’objectif majeur de ce travail de thèse était de montrer l’intérêt qu’il y a à appliquer de manière pertinente, adéquate et complète, des méthodes statistiques adaptées aux différentes sources de données disponibles, afin de documenter l’importance des traumatismes, et des facteurs qui y sont associés. En ayant discuté de l’existence de plusieurs sources potentielles de données en Belgique et en ayant appliqué une série de méthodes statistiques univariées, multivariables et multivariées, sur quelques-unes de celles-ci, nous avons montré qu’il était possible de documenter le fardeau des traumatismes au-travers de résultats utiles mais aussi valables et utilisables dans une approche de santé publique.

Doctorat en Sciences de la santé publique
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Improvisational Leadership: A Descriptive Case Study of the Complex Problem-Solving Experiences of a High-Functioning Federal Government Interdisciplinary Team This study described the symbiotic relationship between shared leadership, organizational improvisation, and symbolic interactionism in generating improvisational leadership vis a vis the complex problem-solving experiences of a high-functioning federal government interdisciplinary team of six veterinarians. The study had a dual goal orientation: (a) to describe members' experiences of complex problem-solving; and (b) to describe how members shared leadership during these experiences. The grand tour question for this study was: What is the nature of improvisational leadership via the complex problem-solving experiences of a high-functioning federal government interdisciplinary team?

The purpose of this study was to describe the nature of improvisational leadership in the complex problem-solving experiences of a high-functioning federal government interdisciplinary team. This study observed that by virtue of their interdisciplinary-interdependent expertise, members were perpetually engaged in interactive knowledge exchange. The research revealed that the medium for these exchanges was polylogue or concurrent, multidirectional, ongoing conversations among the members. The study determined that through this level of discourse and interactivity in real-time, the foci remained on the situation specific needs and in turn placed the needed expertise in the leadership position/role.

The study was designed to broaden understanding concerning the nature of improvisational leadership via the complex problem-solving experiences of a high-functioning federal government interdisciplinary team through describing leadership as an emergent consequence of the needs of the moment, the actions and interactions among members, and the available material, cognitive, affective, and social resources brought to bear in process.

The death penalty has been an area of focus in several academic disciplines, yet modest literature has been generated which examines the sanction from a sociological perspective. Most of the sociological interest in capital punishment is directed at examining and explaining racial disparities in sentencing, its effectiveness as a deterrent to violent crime, or its use as a mode of formal social control. Although execution methods have changed frequently over time in the United States, there is a paucity of research examining this phenomenon through a sociological lens. The extant literature identifies changing societal ideologies regarding the use of institutionalized violence as the impeti for legislative shifts in methods of execution. While these studies are useful in partially explaining method changes through time, there is a dearth of work which specifically addresses the dialectical process by which meanings attached to methods of punishment are socially constructed and negotiated, what social agents are engaged, and how this process occurs with respect to historical context. This dissertation examines the legislative changes in execution methods at two points in time in North Carolinaâ s history, 1935 and 1983. Grounded in a hybrid theoretical foundation of functionalist and interactionist perspectives, this study is a qualitative analysis of historical primary and secondary data. One goal of this project is to identify how social context informed ideologies of state-sanctioned death. Furthermore, this study attempts to reveal some of the various social agents who engaged in the process of negotiating meaning, how this process manifested itself, and how historical context may have influenced differences in legislative motive during the two transition years. A comparative analysis of the data reveals that deference to the institutions of science, technology, and medicine was vital to the process of socially reconstructing and redefining methods of execution at both points in time. However, findings also indicate that public exposure to an existing method of execution as well as historically relative ideologies concerning state-sanctioned death greatly affect how the negotiation of meaning transpires.
Ph. D.

This thesis sets out research carried out to investigate the usefulness of a descriptive database of construction methods for safety assessment. In addition, it investigates the possibility of utilising construction images as sources of safety related information.
The construction industry has been recognized as a hazardous work environment with a high accident rate for years, hence, site safety is a problem. Nowadays, the use of construction images in the form of photographs is commonplace and they are used as sources of information. The literature review reveals that they have never been used as sources of information concerning construction safety practice.
A preliminary investigation is conducted to study the possibility of utilizing construction images as sources of safety related information. The findings revealed that it is possible to use construction images as sources of information for construction safety assessment however, there were problems related to image interpretation and dissimilar safety judgment. It was assumed that those problems were arising from lack of safety knowledge and experiences, also no safety assessment method existed that could be used when using images as sources of information.
To overcome problem related to the existence of safety assessment method, the research developed a method to assess safety by using information observed from images. As a similar safety judgment would be obtained from a same guideline therefore, a safety guideline was established, including safety checklist and safety scores. To give meaning of sets of safety score, two methods of conditional probability approach from Artificial Intelligence that quantitatively deal with uncertainty, the Bayes’ Theorem and the Fuzzy Logic Theory, were employed. The Bayes’ Theorem formula was adopted for calculating a likelihood of a hypothesis being true based on evidence or P(H/E). The hypothesis used in this research that a safe construction practice being used. The evidence used to test this hypothesis is information collected from construction images. This method allows construction practices shown in the images to be defined as having a high level of safety or low level of safety.
The construction practices with low level of safety do not need to analysed further. Fuzzy logic theory can then be used for further classifying those images identified as having a high level of safety into one of three classifications: “most likely safe”, “fairly safe” or “most likely unsafe”.
To overcome problem related to lack of safety knowledge and safety experience, one method of reasoning based on reuse past experience was employed, called the Case- Based Reasoning (CBR). The CBR method will allow safety information stored in database to be reused for reasoning process to give safety scores. As CBR works based on stored information from database therefore an image database has to be developed.
Following works (or researches) have been done to overcome problems revealed from preliminary investigation therefore those works have to organize in a structured and systematic system. The research was developed a safety assessment system called SAFE AS.
The safety assessment system worked in two processes, manual calculation and information storage into database. Manual calculation worked as follows: First, a construction practice judgment is given based on image data, safety checklist and using safety scores provided. Secondly, a construction practice is defined into one of two definitions provided: a high-level and a low-level of safety based on Bayes’ Theorem formula and given safety scores. Third, a high-level of safety of construction practice is classified into one of three classifications: most likely safe, fairly safe and most likely unsafe, which are developed, based on fuzzy sets formula. Following manual calculation process, the result from the process then become an input for the second process: information storage. All information of images and their safety practices are stored in an image database. These two processes are done separately and manually.
Problem is arising from manual safety assessment system, that the processes are time-consuming. To overcome this problem, even to make a safety assessment system practically more benefit, the system is developed in a Web-based system, which allows safety assessment process and information storage process done comprehensively and automatically. All users can share their safety knowledge and experiences, and reuse stored experience as a basis of reasoning process from anywhere.
As a result, the research has developed a Web-based safety assessment system to show how to utilize construction images to assess safe construction practice, store information from assessment process, and reuse this information for safety knowledge enhancement. Two experiments using 69 images and a set of detailed images have confirmed the application of a Web-based safety assessment system and verified its reliability.
Another benefit from the safety assessment system is the safety likelihood scores obtained, which can be used to detect safety trends that are developing in construction project over time. These trends were used to predict the likely safety of the construction practices in use on the project in future so it can be used as indicators to monitor and control safety in construction projects. With this process construction images can be used as sources of safety related information and the safety assessment system can be used in future for predicting, monitoring and controlling of on-site safety.
Areas needing future research are suggested, including providing advance search features in the assessment system to retrieve closer relevant cases for case-based reasoning and automated hazard recognition and identification feature to avoid accident occurrence as the result of human carelessness.

The goal of this study was to examine the professional development experiences of two participants while they were creating standards-based individualized education plan (IEP) goals using a virtual world called TeacherSim. The focuses of the study were how did special educators engage with the task of creating standards-based IEP goals using TeacherSim and how did TeacherSim support or hinder this? This research used a descriptive case study selecting two participants from the larger data set of seven participants. The data was analyzed using qualitative coding which compared the observed experiences with the case propositions. This case study demonstrated that special education professionals can work at a distance to learn the process of creating standards-based IEP goals while using the technology of a virtual world. Similarly, the use of virtual world technology appeared to facilitate feelings of physical and social presence, which aided in online collaborative activities.

Tese de Doutoramento em Desenho
Este é um trabalho de investigação sobre processos de projecto e mais especificamente sobre a forma como a tomada de decisão pode influenciar os resultados destes em termos da sua adequação estratégica e qualidade global. O estudo incide sobre a fase conceptual dos processos de projecto e procura descrever o comportamento dos projectistas tanto ao nível do Ensino (estudantes finalistas) como ao nível das empresas. Um dos resultados previstos era a criação de um modelo descritivo que suportasse a compreensão da gestão de processos de projecto nas suas variáveis mais críticas. Este modelo descritivo deveria basear-se na identificação de parâmetros chave dos processos de design no que concerne a sua adequação estratégica e qualidade global. Em termos metodológicos trata-se de uma investigação mista com claro domínio de métodos qualitativos de investigação activa como são as experiências videogravadas de processos de projecto, tanto em situação de simulação como em situação de contexto real. Os métodos quantitativos foram também utlizados e serviram o propósito da triangulação metodológica de dados por forma a obter-se uma descrição o mais rigorosa e consistente possível dos processos de projecto e seus elementos estruturantes. A recolha de dados deu-se tanto no contexto de ensino como no contexto empresarial portugueses tendo-se efectuado experiências em que estas duas áreas de intervenção interagiram. Ademais foi feita uma comparação do desempenho de estudantes universitários Portugueses e Holandeses do Curso de Design. Esta análise almejava confirmar informação obtida em estudos anteriores e assim validar o presente estudo e também visava perceber o papel que diferentes currículos de ensino podem ter na performance dos alunos finalistas. A conclusão fundamental deste estudo é a de que a tomada de decisão a par com a gestão de informação e conhecimento e a geração de ideias são aspectos fundamentais a serem acedidos nos processos de projecto xiii Resumo quando se persegue a sua adequação estratégica e uma boa qualidade global destes. Um segundo contributo deste trabalho é a descriminação de um conjunto de parâmetros que servem a melhor compreensão dos processos de tomada de decisão no projecto. Estes parâmetros integram um modelo descritivo de tomada de decisão criado e que equaciona a tomada de decisão em três níveis distintos que são interdependentes da gestão de informação e conhecimento e da geração de ideias. O modelo criado apresenta num nível macro, respeitante à ‘mindset’ do projectista e que tem dois elementos a considerar: a) a estratégia de projecto que pode ser de três tipos: guiada pelo problema; guiada pela solução; guiada pela integração; e b) os processos cognitivos criativos que assumem dois modos de acção: o exploratório, que tem a ver com operações tais como a alteração contextual, a inferência funcional, o teste de hipóteses e, o generativo, que se relaciona com a transferência analógica, a associação, a recuperação de elementos/informação e a síntese. Num nível intermédio as decisões podem ser de três distintas naturezas: de Enquadramento (Framing), Chave (Key) e Facilitadoras (Enabler). Por fim temos o nível micro do modelo, que corresponde à operacionalização da ‘mindset’ e que compreende a estratégia da decisão e o modo de decisão. Quanto à estratégia de decisão esta pode ser: a) baseada em regras de compensação, b) baseada em regras de não compensação ou c) mista numa negociação das duas primeiras. O modo de decisão está intimamente ligado às dinâmicas de grupo e foca-se na forma como os grupos organizam o projecto e decidem.
This research focuses on the design process and more specifically on the way decision making can influence the design process’ outcomes in its strategic adequacy and overall quality. The study is centred on the conceptual phase of the design process and, in general, aims to describe the behaviour along the process of design students and professional Portuguese designers both at the educational and business level. It should result in a descriptive model to support the understanding of design process management in terms of its critical variables. This descriptive model is based on the identification of the key parameters of design processes concerning its strategic adequacy and overall quality. In methodological terms it is a mixed methods research with a clear dominance of qualitative methods integrating an active research where experiments either in simulated situations or in real context play a key role. Quantitative methods were also used and they served the purpose of triangulating data in order to have a more consistent and rigorous description of the design process and its main structural elements. Data gathering occurred in the education and business areas, partly separately and partly combined. Furthermore, in the field of education a comparison of the performance of both Portuguese and Dutch university students was made. That helped to validate some findings of previous studies but also to understand the role different Design curricula can have in the performance of students. The main conclusion of the study is that decision making togehter with information and knowledge management, and idea generation are the fundamental aspects to be addressed in design processes when both strategic adequacy and good quality of the design outcomes are pursued. Another important finding is that decision making is better understood through the use of a few central parameters. These parameters were used in the creation of a descriptive decision making model that equates xi Abstract decision making at three different levels that are highly dependent on information/knowledge management and Idea generation. At a macro level, which regards the mindset of the designer, we make a distinction into two elements: a) the design strategy with its three types – problem driven, solution driven and integration driven; and b) the creative cognitive processes that present two modes of action: the exploratory one that has to do with operations such as contextual shifting, functional inference and hypothesis testing; and the generative one that is related with analogical transfer, association, retrieval and synthesis. At an intermediate level we have decisions that can have a Framing, Key or Enabler nature. And finally, we have the micro level of the model, the operationalization of the mindset, where the decision strategy and the decision mode are chosen. The decision strategy presents three types of behavior: the compensatory rule based; the non compensatory rule based and the negotiated compensatory /non compensatory one and it is clearly linked with the way decisions are taken in processing information. The mode of decision is linked with group dynamics and focuses on the way teams organize themselves while working and deciding.

Retention of teachers in correctional organizations is an ongoing challenge. A correctional education setting is a nontraditional unstable academic setting where teacher turnover is one third within the first 5 years. The purpose of this descriptive qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of leaders in correctional organizations who are challenged with finding ways to reduce teacher turnover in a juvenile correctional facility. The conceptual framework that guided this study was Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Using purposive sampling, 6 former juvenile correctional principals participated in the study. Data were collected through systematic open-ended semistructured interviews with 4 occurring via email correspondence, a reflective journal, and member checking. Participants provided their perceptions of factors or events that impacted a teacher's decision to remain in or leave the field. Data were analyzed with an intention to discover emerging themes through the process of thematic coding via a modified Van Manen method. The themes that emerged from the data included participatory leadership/principal support, administration expectations versus teacher expectations, correctional setting barriers, and teacher flexibility. Leadership employing and retaining quality teachers increases the probability of incarcerated youth receiving continuous educational services that are necessary to reenter society as a productive student. The increase chance of success provides a boost to the economy for society, a positive social change, because of the youth's academic and job readiness to operate as a productive citizen.

This work presents mainly two contributions to Description Logics (DLs) research by means of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) methods: supporting bottom-up construction of DL knowledge bases, and completing DL knowledge bases. Its contribution to FCA research is on the computational complexity of computing generators of closed sets.

This work presents mainly two contributions to Description Logics (DLs) research by means of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) methods: supporting bottom-up construction of DL knowledge bases, and completing DL knowledge bases. Its contribution to FCA research is on the computational complexity of computing generators of closed sets.

Description Logics (DLs) are a family of logic-based knowledge representation languages used to describe the knowledge of an application domain and reason about it in formally well-defined way. They allow users to describe the important notions and classes of the knowledge domain as concepts, which formalize the necessary and sufficient conditions for individual objects to belong to that concept. A variety of different DLs exist, differing in the set of properties one can use to express concepts, the so-called concept constructors, as well as the set of axioms available to describe the relations between concepts or individuals. However, all classical DLs have in common that they can only express exact knowledge, and correspondingly only allow exact inferences. Either we can infer that some individual belongs to a concept, or we can't, there is no in-between. In practice though, knowledge is rarely exact. Many definitions have their exceptions or are vaguely formulated in the first place, and people might not only be interested in exact answers, but also in alternatives that are "close enough". This thesis is aimed at tackling how to express that something "close enough", and how to integrate this notion into the formalism of Description Logics. To this end, we will use the notion of similarity and dissimilarity measures as a way to quantify how close exactly two concepts are. We will look at how useful measures can be defined in the context of DLs, and how they can be incorporated into the formal framework in order to generalize it. In particular, we will look closer at two applications of thus measures to DLs: Relaxed instance queries will incorporate a similarity measure in order to not just give the exact answer to some query, but all answers that are reasonably similar. Prototypical definitions on the other hand use a measure of dissimilarity or distance between concepts in order to allow the definitions of and reasoning with concepts that capture not just those individuals that satisfy exactly the stated properties, but also those that are "close enough".

Ce rapport aborde les problemes generaux lies a la simulation numerique des ecoulements oceaniques. Dans ce contexte, on desire observer le comportement de methodes numeriques n'impliquant a priori aucune hypothese limitative sur les echelles spatiales de la modelisation. Pour cela, on a adapte et developpe des techniques de resolution des equations de navier stokes incompressibles par des methodes de type volume fini. Dans la premiere partie, nous presentons le principe et les modifications numeriques entreprises sur l'application de cette technique a des maillages discrets structures. La reponse de ce modele concerne le comportement tridimensionnel, en presence de rotation constante, d'un ecoulement uniforme, homogene ou inhomogene, passant au dessus d'une topographie sous-marine isolee dans un bassin de moyenne echelle. Les resultats de differentes configurations parametriques s'accordent correctement aux descriptions physiques ou numeriques disponibles dans la litterature. La deuxieme partie concerne l'extension plus consequente d'une methode volume fini s'appliquant a des maillages non-structures. Le developpement de nouveaux elements bidimensionnels permet ainsi de retrouver divers mecanismes barotropes de circulation oceanique horizontale de grande echelle. Par ailleurs, l'introduction d'un schema de transport non-lineaire de type muscl contribue a l'amelioration de la qualite des simulations et fait l'objet d'une validation concluante sur une solution analytique bidimensionnelle originale. Enfin, nous discutons des problemes actuels et des alternatives envisageables concernant les futures applications tridimensionnelles de ces methodes de discretisation aux simulations d'ecoulements oceaniques

This thesis extends the utility of probabilistic methods in two diverse domains: multimodal biometrics and machine inspection. The attraction for this approach is that it is easily understood by those using such a system; however the advantages extend beyond the ease of human utility. Probabilistic measures are ideal for combination since they are guaranteed to be within a fixed range and are generally well scaled. We describe the background to probabilistic techniques and critique common implementations used by practitioners. We then set out our novel probabilistic framework for classification and verification, discussing the various optimisations and placing this framework within a data fusion context. Our work on biometrics describes the complex system we have developed for collection of multimodal biometrics, including collection strategies, system components and the modalities employed. We further examine the performance of multimodal biometrics; particularly examining performance prediction, modality correlation and the use of imbalanced classifiers. We show the benefits from score fused multimodal biometrics, even in the imbalanced case and how the decidability index may be used for optimal weighting and performance prediction. In examining machine inspection we describe in detail the development of a complex system for the automated examination of ophthalmic contact lenses. We demonstrate the performance of this system and describe the benefits that complex image processing techniques and probabilistic methods can bring to this field. We conclude by drawing these two areas together, critically evaluating the work and describing further work that we feel is necessary in the field.

Anomaly detection is a fundamental research topic that has been widely investigated. From critical industrial systems, e.g., network intrusion detection systems, to people’s daily activities, e.g., mobile fraud detection, anomaly detection has become the very first vital resort to protect and secure public and personal properties. Although anomaly detection methods have been under consistent development over the years, the explosive growth of data volume and the continued dramatic variation of data patterns pose great challenges on the anomaly detection systems and are fuelling the great demand of introducing more intelligent anomaly detection methods with distinct characteristics to cope with various needs. To this end, this thesis starts with presenting a thorough review of existing anomaly detection strategies and methods. The advantageous and disadvantageous of the strategies and methods are elaborated. Afterward, four distinctive anomaly detection methods, especially for time series, are proposed in this work aiming at resolving specific needs of anomaly detection under different scenarios, e.g., enhanced accuracy, interpretable results, and self-evolving models. Experiments are presented and analysed to offer a better understanding of the performance of the methods and their distinct features. To be more specific, the abstracts of the key contents in this thesis are listed as follows: 1) Support Vector Data Description (SVDD) is investigated as a primary method to fulfill accurate anomaly detection. The applicability of SVDD over noisy time series datasets is carefully examined and it is demonstrated that relaxing the decision boundary of SVDD always results in better accuracy in network time series anomaly detection. Theoretical analysis of the parameter utilised in the model is also presented to ensure the validity of the relaxation of the decision boundary. 2) To support a clear explanation of the detected time series anomalies, i.e., anomaly interpretation, the periodic pattern of time series data is considered as the contextual information to be integrated into SVDD for anomaly detection. The formulation of SVDD with contextual information maintains multiple discriminants which help in distinguishing the root causes of the anomalies. 3) In an attempt to further analyse a dataset for anomaly detection and interpretation, Convex Hull Data Description (CHDD) is developed for realising one-class classification together with data clustering. CHDD approximates the convex hull of a given dataset with the extreme points which constitute a dictionary of data representatives. According to the dictionary, CHDD is capable of representing and clustering all the normal data instances so that anomaly detection is realised with certain interpretation. 4) Besides better anomaly detection accuracy and interpretability, better solutions for anomaly detection over streaming data with evolving patterns are also researched. Under the framework of Reinforcement Learning (RL), a time series anomaly detector that is consistently trained to cope with the evolving patterns is designed. Due to the fact that the anomaly detector is trained with labeled time series, it avoids the cumbersome work of threshold setting and the uncertain definitions of anomalies in time series anomaly detection tasks.

Slow-servo single-point diamond turning as well as advances in computer controlled small lap polishing enable the fabrication of freeform optics, specifically, optical surfaces for imaging applications that are not rotationally symmetric. Freeform optical elements will have a profound importance in the future of optical technology. Orthogonal polynomials added onto conic sections have been extensively used to describe optical surface shapes. The optical testing industry has chosen to represent the departure of a wavefront under test from a reference sphere in terms of orthogonal ?-polynomials, specifically Zernike polynomials. Various forms of polynomials for describing freeform optical surfaces may be considered, however, both in optical design and in support of fabrication. More recently, radial basis functions were also investigated for optical shape description. In the application of orthogonal ?-polynomials to optical freeform shape description, there are important limitations, such as the number of terms required as well as edge-ringing and ill-conditioning in representing the surface with the accuracy demanded by most stringent optics applications. The first part of this dissertation focuses upon describing freeform optical surfaces with ? polynomials and shows their limitations when including higher orders together with possible remedies. We show that a possible remedy is to use edge clustered-fitting grids. Provided different grid types, we furthermore compared the efficacy of using different types of ? polynomials, namely Zernike and gradient orthogonal Q polynomials. In the second part of this thesis, a local, efficient and accurate hybrid method is developed in order to greatly reduce the order of polynomial terms required to achieve higher level of accuracy in freeform shape description that were shown to require thousands of terms including many higher order terms under prior art. This comes at the expense of multiple sub-apertures, and as such computational methods may leverage parallel processing. This new method combines the assets of both radial basis functions and orthogonal phi-polynomials for freeform shape description and is uniquely applicable across any aperture shape due to its locality and stitching principles. Finally in this thesis, in order to comprehend the possible advantages of parallel computing for optical surface descriptions, the benefits of making an effective use of impressive computational power offered by multi-core platforms for the computation of ?-polynomials are investigated. The ?-polynomials, specifically Zernike and gradient orthogonal Q-polynomials, are implemented with a set of recurrence based parallel algorithms on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The results show that more than an order of magnitude speedup is possible in the computation of ?-polynomials over a sequential implementation if the recurrence based parallel algorithms are adopted.
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Electrical Engineering and Computing
Engineering and Computer Science
Computer Engineering

Dans cette thèse nous présentons quelque nouvelles méthodes permettent de trouver des solutions approchées aux équations d'Einstein, avec un intérêt particulier pour les solutions ondulatoires. Mais il ne suffit pas de prévoir la forme d'onde gravitationnelle émise par certains systèmes, notamment les étoiles binaires, il faut aussi être capable d'extraire le maximum de d'information physique qu'elle est censée apporter. C'est pourquoi il est important de savoir analyser les signaux gravitationnels pouvant être détectés par des méthodes interférométriques, qui sont actuellement les plus Prometteuses parmi toutes les méthodes de détection gravitationnelle proposées jusqu'ici. Cette thèse est composée de deux parties. Dans la première nous introduisons tout d'abord le sujet des ondes gravitationnelles. Nous expliquons brièvement comment on résout de façon approchée les équations d'Einstein, en trouvant en particulier des solutions ondulatoires. Ensuite nous reportons quelques-uns des résultats que nous avons obtenus dans notre travail, dans le domaine de la recherche de solutions approchées des équations d'Einstein par la méthode de déformations des plongements isométriques, et dans la théorie de l'estimation des paramètres physiques de la source, que l'on peut calculer un fois l'onde détectée. La deuxième partie de cette thèse regroupe les articles que nous avons publiés ou en train de être acceptés ou soumis

Socrates' first mission to understand the riddle of the Oracle led him to a definition of wisdom. His second method was to help others discover this wisdom and from this discover how to live the good life. Plato portrays Socrates in the Earlier Dialogs using the elenchus to fulfil this mission. This form of argument has been described by Socratic scholars, but contradictions between it and statements made by Socrates of what he did indicate it may not be the method he used. Socrates may not have used the elenchus, but he did do something and what it was can be identified from his statements; providing these are accepted as reliable. The method proposed indicates that Socrates rationally examined life by asking people why they take certain actions. Their answers were either in terms of the expected results, or general statements of what a person should do. Socrates appears to have examined the first type of answer directly by a cross-examination of the person's opinions of what the consequences will be. He appears to have examined the second type of answer by examining examples based on the general statement. The first type of examination will indicate whether it is wise to take a particular action or not. The second type of examination will only indicate whether the aim of the action is worthwhile. The evidence suggests that Socrates had a pragmatic method of examining life which indicates which actions are most likely to bring the best results and therefore the best life. The wise person will use the method to examine their life, and then act in accordance with what they discover.

Organizations in the age of modern technology have a diverse workforce, who are spread around the globe, and the business leaders of the 21st century need to understand how best to manage, overcome new challenges, and know the various skills of team members to capitalize on their differences and unique skills. To allow those geographically dispersed workers to reach their full potential and facilitate team success. Global virtual teams (GVTs) operate in complex environments characterized by diverse cultural and organizational elements. The primary purpose of this correlational and nonexperimental quantitative research was to examine the impact of transformational leadership on GVTs, their productivity, and job satisfaction with leadership effectiveness. Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), data analyzes were completed through SurveyMonkey.com and SPSS software. The study measured transformational leadership, the independent variable, by the leader's ability to motivate workers to be satisfied and productive, and by the leader's effectiveness in the organization. Data were assessed by frequency analysis, moderation analyzes, and multiple regression analysis on the dependent variables of job satisfaction, leadership effectiveness, and productivity. The findings from this study reinforced the positive relationships found between transformational leadership, employee productivity, and leadership effectiveness in GVTs. Results also showed that motivated employees increase productivity and help in the organization's growth. Implications for positive social change included improvements in GVT interactions to increase the exchange of diverse ideas that lead to increased productivity and job satisfaction.

Dynamic soil-structure interaction problems are characterized by an unbounded soil-domain and thus by radiation damping. This radiation damping arises due to wave propagation from the excited structure into the subsoil and may lead to a reduction of the structural response. A consistent description of this radiation damping has been carried out by means of different concepts. A widely used approach truncates the unbounded medium by a special kind of absorbing boundaries which are free of artificial reflection. The resulting finite domain can be treated as usually by finite elements. In this report, an alternative method to represent an unbounded medium in a dynamic analysis is presented. In principle, it is a conjunction of the boundary element method (BEM) in the frequency domain to reproduce the far-field and the finite element method (FEM) in the time domain to analyze the near-field. This alternative procedure avoids the introduction of any artificial boundaries. The procedure is based on a rational approximation of the dynamic stiffness of the unbounded domain in the frequency-domain. In this report, the dynamic stiffness of the unbounded domain is obtained from the BEM. The matrix-valued coefficients of the rational approximation function are determined by means of a least-square procedure. The time-domain representation is achieved by splitting the rational force-displacement relation into a series of linear functions in the frequency-domain corresponding with first order differential equations in the time-domain. This splitting process has been demonstrated as numerically effective and in addition, no Fourier transformation is necessary. In this thesis, dynamic soil-structure interaction problems with a relatively large number of degrees of freedom have been examined. These degrees of freedom arise from the discretization of the coupling interface, internal variables from the splitting procedure and from modeling the structure. The new method is especially suitable for systems with transient excitations as arising from rotating machines at startup and shutdown. The theoretical part of the thesis contains elements of system theory and discusses particularly stability problems arising from the rational approximation. The practical part presents a large amount of convergence studies and numerical results for layered soil and finally represents the propagation damping as a kind of damping ratio which is typically used in elementary structural dynamics
In der Dynamik der Boden-Bauwerk-Interaktion wird der Boden in vielen Fällen durch ein unbegrenztes elastisches Medium beschrieben, wodurch das Phänomen der Abstrahldämpfung begründet wird. Diese Dämpfung entsteht durch Energietransfer von der erregten Struktur in den Boden durch Wellenausbreitung und reduziert somit die Strukturschwingungen. Um das infinite Bodengebiet dennoch durch finite Elemente beschreiben zu können, werden üblicherweise als Hilfsmaßnahme künstliche sogenannte absorbierende Ränder eingeführt. In dieser Arbeit wird eine alternative Methode zur Darstellung des unbegrenzten Mediums in der Dynamik vorgelegt. Im Prinzip handelt es sich um eine Kopplung der Rand-Element-Methode (REM) für den unendlichen Boden (das sogenannte Fernfeld) im Frequenzbereich und der Finite-Element-Methode (FEM) für das Nahfeld im Zeitbereich. Dieses alternative Verfahren vermeidet die Einführung künstlicher Ränder. Das Verfahren basiert auf einer rationalen Beschreibung der dynamischen Steifigkeit des Fernfeldes im Frequenzbereich. Diese Steifigkeit wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit durch die Rand-Element-Methode erzeugt. Die Matrix-wertigen Koeffizienten der rationalen Frequenzfunktion werden durch Minimierung des Fehlerquadrates berechnet. Die Transformation dieser Frequenzdarstellung in den Zeitbereich gelingt durch algebraische Überführung der rationalen Funktion in ein in der Frequenz lineares Hypersystem mit einer zugeordneten Zustandsgleichung erste Ordnung im Zeitbereich. Dieser Prozess hat sich als numerisch effektiv erwiesen und erfordert darüberhinaus keine Fourier-Transformation. Das entwickelte Vorgehen wird in dieser Arbeit an Problemen der dynamischen Boden-Bauwerk-Interaktion mit einer großen Anzahl von Freiheitsgraden erprobt. Diese Freiheitsgrade folgen aus der Diskretisierung in der Koppelfuge zwischen Boden und Struktur, der Diskretisierung der Struktur selbst und aus der Überführung in das Hypersystem mittels interner Variablen. Das neue Verfahren eignet sich insbesondere für Systeme mit transienter Erregung, wie sie beim An- und Auslaufen von Rotationsmaschinen ensteht. Der theoretische Teil der Arbeit wird geprägt durch Elemente der Systemtheorie und setzt sich zudem mit typischen Stabilitätsproblemen auseinander, die aus der rationalen Beschreibung entstehen. Der praktische Teil präsentiert Konvergenzstudien und numerische Ergebnisse für Boden-Bauwerk- Interaktionsprobleme mit geschichtetem Boden bei transienter Erregung mit Resonanzdurchlauf. Zudem gelingt eine Darstellung der Abstrahldämpfung in Form des Dämpfungsgrades D, wie er in der klassischen Strukturdynamik verwendet wird

Une nouvelle approche de la description des champs aleatoires sur le reseau entier v- dimensionnel z v est presentee. Les champs aleatoires sont decrits en terme de certaines fonctions de sous-ensembles de z v, a savoir les p-fonctions, les q-fonctions, les h-fonctions, les q-systemes, les h-systemes et les systemes ponctuels. La correlation avec la description gibbsienne classique est montree. Une attention particuliere est portee au cas quasilocal. Les champs aleatoires non-gibbsiens sont aussi consideres. Un procede general pour construire des champs aleatoires non-gibbsiens est donne. La solution du probleme de dobrushin concernant la description d'un champ aleatoire par ses distributions conditionnelles ponctuelles est deduite de notre approche. Ensuite, le probleme de l'estimation parametrique pour les champs aleatoires de gibbs est considere. Le champ est suppose specifie en terme d'un systeme ponctuel local invariant par translation. Un estimateur du systeme ponctuel est construit comme un rapport de certaines frequences conditionnelles empiriques. Ses consistances exponentielle et l p uniformes sont demontrees. Finalement, le probleme nonparametrique de l'estimation d'un systeme ponctuel quasilocal est considere. Un estimateur du systeme ponctuel est construit par la methode de sieves. Ses consistances exponentielle et l p sont prouvees dans des cadres differents. Les resultats sont valides independamment de la non-unicite et de la perte de l'invariance par translation
A new approach towards description of random fields on the v-dimensional integer lattice Zv is presented. The random fields are described by means of some functions of subsets of Zv, namely P-functions, Q-functions,H-functions, Q-systems, H-systems and one-point systems. Interconnexion with classical Gibbs description is shown. Special attention is paid to quasilocal case. Non-Gibbsian random fields are also considered. A general scheme for constructing non-Gibbsian random fields is given. The solution to Dobrushin's problem concerning the description of random field by means of its one-point conditional distributions is deduced from our approach. Further the problems of parametric estimation for Gibbs random fields is considered. The field is supposed to be specified through a translation invariant local one-point system. An estimator of one-point system is constructed as a ratio of some empirical conditional frequencies, and its uniform exponential and Lp consistencies are proved. Finally the nonparametric problem of estimation of quasilocal one-point systems is considered. An estimator of one-point system is constructed by the method of sieves, and its exponential and Lp consistencies are proved in different setups. The results hold regardless of non-uniqueness and translation invariance breaking

Description Logics (DLs) are a class of knowledge representation formalisms that can represent terminological and assertional knowledge using a well-defined semantics. Often, knowledge engineers are experts in their own fields, but not in logics, and require assistance in the process of ontology design. This thesis presents three methods that can extract terminological knowledge from existing data and thereby assist in the design process. They are based on similar formalisms from Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), in particular the Next-Closure Algorithm and Attribute-Exploration. The first of the three methods computes terminological knowledge from the data, without any expert interaction. The two other methods use expert interaction where a human expert can confirm each terminological axiom or refute it by providing a counterexample. These two methods differ only in the way counterexamples are provided.

Mestrado Vinifera Euromaster - Instituto Superior de Agronomia - UL
Conventional  sensory  analysis  uses  a  technical  language  to  define  and  quantify  visual,  aromatic   and  mouth-­‐feel  perceptions,  while  emotion  based  methods  aim  at  qualifying  the  impressions  or   expectations  these  perceptions  may  trigger.  The  objectives  this  study  were  to  (i)  develop  a  wine   tasting  sheet  including  emotional  responses  and  conventional  sensory  attributes;  (ii)  establish  a   list  of  emotions  described  by  consumers  after  tasting  red  wine.       A  previous  emotion  based  tasting  sheet  was  improved  through  several  Focus  Group  sessions.  An   Optimized  Quantitative  Descriptive  Analysis  (OQDA)  was  then  run  to  assess  8   sensory   descriptors  of  the  emotional  tasting  sheet.  Finally,  5  red  wines  were  evaluated  in  a  Final   Consumer  Tasting  (FCT)  of  103  consumers  with  the  improved  emotional  tasting  sheet  and  a   Check-­‐All-­‐That-­‐Apply  questionnaire  of  25  emotional  adjectives.       The  main  discriminating  attributes  were  “Complexity”  (Odor),  “Astringency”  (Taste)  and   “Duration  of  the  fragrance  of  the  wine”  in  the  trained  panel  (OQDA)  and  “Color”,  “Initial   impression”  (Odor)  and  “Expectation  for  the  mouth”  for  the  untrained  tasters  in  the  FCT.     In  particular,  a  classic  European  style  red  wine,  was  less  liked  in  the  FCT,  though  it  received  high   scores  in  the  OQDA  and  regarded  as  the  most  “surprising”  in  the  CATA.  This  result  is  promising   because  it  showed  that  emotional  responses  may  enable  an  easier  recognition  of  this  wine  style   by  consumers.       Overall,  the  emotional  method  developed  in  this  work  proposes  to  evaluate  wines  in  a  way  that   is  more  accessible  to  the  consumer  than  traditional  sensory  analysis

Previous usability evaluation method (UEM) comparison studies have noted an evaluator effect on problem detection in heuristic evaluation, with evaluators differing in problems found and problem severity judgments. There have been few studies of the evaluator effect in usability testing (UT), task-based testing with end-users. UEM comparison studies focus on counting usability problems detected, but we also need to assess the content of usability problem descriptions (UPDs) to more fully measure evaluation effectiveness. The goals of this research were to develop UPD guidelines, explore the evaluator effect in UT, and evaluate the usefulness of the guidelines for grading UPD content.

Ten guidelines for writing UPDs were developed by consulting usability practitioners through two questionnaires and a card sort. These guidelines are (briefly): be clear and avoid jargon, describe problem severity, provide backing data, describe problem causes, describe user actions, provide a solution, consider politics and diplomacy, be professional and scientific, describe your methodology, and help the reader sympathize with the user. A fourth study compared usability reports collected from 44 evaluators, both practitioners and graduate students, watching the same 10-minute UT session recording. Three judges measured problem detection for each evaluator and graded the reports for following 6 of the UPD guidelines.

There was support for existence of an evaluator effect, even when watching pre-recorded sessions, with low to moderate individual thoroughness of problem detection across all/severe problems (22%/34%), reliability of problem detection (37%/50%) and reliability of severity judgments (57% for severe ratings). Practitioners received higher grades averaged across the 6 guidelines than students did, suggesting that the guidelines may be useful for grading reports. The grades for the guidelines were not correlated with thoroughness, suggesting that the guideline grades complement measures of problem detection.

A simulation of evaluators working in groups found a 34% increase in severe problems found by adding a second evaluator. The simulation also found that thoroughness of individual evaluators would have been overestimated if the study had included a small number of evaluators. The final recommendations are to use multiple evaluators in UT, and to assess both problem detection and description when measuring evaluation effectiveness.
Ph. D.

Firstly, this thesis investigates the electrical power harmonics in an attempt to utilize harmonic current and its distortion power in a novel idea to reconvert the distortion power into useful power. This is done, in order to feed different DC or AC loads in single and three-phase power system by using passive or active filters and accordingly, develop a new topology of hybrid active power filter (HAPF). In addition, this circuit can be considered as a power factor corrector (PFC) because it reduces the total harmonic distortion (THD) and improves the power factor (PF). Secondly, this thesis works on a new design of active power factor correction (APFC) circuit presenting two circuits with the same design principle: the first design consists of two active switches without an external complex control circuit, while the second design contains a single active switch with an additional control circuit. The main contribution of this circuit is 98% reduction of the inductor's value used in the newly proposed PFC circuit in comparison with the conventional boost converter which may lead to a huge reduction in size, weight and the cost of the new PFC circuit. Also, the active switches depend on a carefully designed switching pattern that results in an elimination of the third order harmonic from the input source current which decreases the value of total current harmonic distortion (THDI) to (14%) and improves the input PF to (0.99). Consequently, the simplicity of the design without requiring a complex control circuit and without a snubber circuit plus the minimum size of inductor, gives the newly proposed circuit the superiority on other PFC circuits. Thirdly, this research aims to describe the distortion power through submitting two novel power terms called effective active power (Pef ) & reactive power (Qef ) terms with a new power diagram called Right-Angled Power Triangle (RAPT) Diagram. In addition, a novel de nition of total apparent power (St) has been submitted in order to illustrate the physical meaning of (St) in non-sinusoidal systems. The new RAPT Diagram is based on the orthogonality law and depends on geometrical summation to describe the relationship between different aspects (apparent-active-reactive) of power, and different components (total-fundamental distortion), drawing a bridge to connect the time domain with the frequency domain in a two-dimensional diagram.

Optical interferometry has been applied for distance metrology since the time of Michelson and Benoit. One of the current challenges in interferometric metrology is to achieve long range unambiguous measurement, for example of gauge blocks up to 500 mm in length and in interferometric telescopes, where path length differences can be 10's of meters. A theoretical analysis of multi-wavelength interferometry describing the relationship between unambiguous measurement range, reliability and the measurement wavelengths is the main focus of this research. The results of this analysis allow the derivation of a theoretical model that can be used to develop wavelength selection strategies. Hence, it is possible to maximize the reliability in the calculated fringe order for a given measurement range, number of wavelengths, and level of phase noise. Optimum wavelength selection strategies have been implemented in a fibre optic four-wavelength interferometer and experiments have been carried out showing an overall dynamic range of 1 part in 2x10 6, or a resolution of 8 nm in >18 mm.

Problem: The process planning task for a given design problem in additive manufacturing can be greatly enhanced by referencing previously developed process plans. However, identifying appropriate process plans for the given design problem requires appropriate mapping between the design domain and the process planning domain. Hence, the objective of this research is to establish mathematical mapping between the design domain and the process planning domain such that the previously developed appropriate process plans can be identified for the given design task. Further more, identification of an appropriate mathematical theory that enables computational mapping between the two domains is of interest. Through such computational mapping, previously developed process plans are expected to be shared in a distributed environment using an open repository. Approach: The design requirements and process plans are discretized using empirical models that compute exact values of process variables for the given design requirements. Through this discretization, subsumption relations among the discretized design requirements and process plans are identified. Appropriate process plans for a given design requirement are identified by subsumption relations in the design requirements. Also, the design requirements that can be satisfied by the given process plans are identified by subsumption relations among the process plans. To computationally realize such mapping, a description logic (ALE) is identified and justified to represent and compute subsumption relation. Based on this investigation, a retrieval method (DFM framework) is realized that enables storage and retrieval of process plans. Validation: Theoretical and empirical validations are performed using the validation square method. For the theoretical validation, an appropriate description logic (ALE) is identified and justified. Also, subsumption utilization in mapping two domains and realizing the DFM framework is justified. For the empirical validation, the storing and retrieval performance of the DFM framework is tested to demonstrate its theoretical validity. Contribution: In this research, two areas of contributions are identified: DFM and engineering information management. In DFM, the retrieval method that relates the design problem to appropriate process plans through mathematical mapping between design and process planning domain is the major contribution. In engineering information management, the major contributions are the development of information models and the identification of their characteristics. Based on this investigation, an appropriate description logic (ALE) is selected and justified. Also, corresponding computational feasibility (non deterministic polynomial time) of subsumption is identified.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007.
Nelson Baker, Committee Member ; Charles Eastman, Committee Member ; Christiaan Paredis, Committee Member ; Janet Allen, Committee Member ; David Rosen, Committee Chair.

Trabalho apresentado no âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática
First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, José Júlio Alferes, for his incredible support. Right from the start, during the first semester of this work, when we were 2700 km apart and meeting regularly via Skype, until the end of this dissertation, he was always committed and available for discussions, even when he had lots of other urgent things to do. A really special thanks to Terrance Swift, whom acted as an advisor, helping me a lot in the second implementation, and correcting all XSB’s and CDF’s bugs. This implementation wouldn’t surely have reached such a fruitful end without his support. I would also like to thank all my colleagues and friends at FCT for the great work environment and for not letting me take myself too serious. A special thanks to my colleagues from Dresden for encouraging me to work even when there were so many other interesting things to do as an Erasmus student. I’m indebted to Luís Leal, Bárbara Soares, Jorge Soares and Cecília Calado, who kindly accepted to read a preliminary version of this report and gave me their valuable comments. For giving me working conditions and a partial financial support, I acknowledge the Departamento de Informática of the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologias of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank my parents and all my family for their continuous encouragement and motivation. A special thanks to Bruno for his love, support and patience.

The growth of forced migration populations - i.e. the movement of people within and across national boarders as a result of conflicts, disasters, and development policies and projects - has been a defining feature of the twentieth century and will no doubt remain with us well into the twenty-first century (Rutinwa, 2001: 13). Literature searches suggest that the ‘refugee’ constitutes the most powerful label within the forced migration discourse. Published calculations regarding the number of refugees in the world at the end of 2008, range between 15.2 million (UNHCR, 2009: 2) and 13.6 million (World Refugee Survey, 2009: 33). The refugee experience of a small representative population of these figures namely, the Zimbabwean refugees living within the Central Methodist Church (CMC) or Central Methodist Mission (CMM) refugee community, in Johannesburg city centre is the concern of this treatise. From the perspective of the conflict management scholar, the informal and formal conflict management strategies adopted among and between the CMM refugees, have been studied. Analysis of existing literature, interviews conducted with the refugees, as well as hours of experience within the refugee community, substantiate the descriptive study that follows. Guided by the grounded theory approach, research findings have emerged out of the descriptions. The research findings in turn have founded the development of the recommendations that appear in the conclusion to the treatise.

The goal of the thesis is to plan for tourism in a historic community in a manner that would enrich the experiences of its visitors and residents. In order to avoid tourism's undesirable impacts, a method is presented to document residents' and visitors' problems and the improvements they desire, and to describe and compare their images of Madison.Data collection begins with structured interviews followed by a questionnaire distributed to random samples of residents and visitors. The results of the questionnaire analysis establish the residents' and visitors' images. The two images are compared using statistical tests to identify the places with greatest, moderate, and least image differences. Out of the twenty-six places tested, eleven show significant image differences.The image findings are incorporated into the site analysis for tourism. Objectives for tourism are expressed in a concept diagram, and then refined in a conceptual plan. The accompanying recommendations outline policies for proposed facilities, visitor-resident relations, and environmental education.
Department of Landscape Architecture

The thermodynamic properties of the Co-Cr-Mo ternary system have been described. Available experimental data on the system have been assessed and applied to optimize the parameters used in the thermodynamic models within the Calphad method. Meanwhile, samples were made by the powder metallurgical process and heat treated (sintered) at 1573 K to investigate the phase diagram data related to the intermetallic phases, such as σ, μ and R phases present in the system. With the optimized thermodynamic description, we are able to fit most of the experimental data in the literature and from this work. However, the one phase field of R is too narrow in the present description. Furthermore, at 1573 K the extension of the phase boundary of σ toward the Co corner needs to be improved. In addition, the calculated phase diagram at 1573 K shows a fcc-bcc-σ three-phase equilibrium near the Co-Cr binary side. This is not shown in the experimentally determined ternary phase diagram but is necessary in order to match the recent data on the Co-Cr binary system.