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Directional selection is prevalent in nature yet phenotypes tend to remain relatively constant, suggesting a limit to trait evolution. The genetic basis of evolutionary limits in unmanipulated populations, however, is generally not known. Given widespread pleiotropy, opposing selection on a focal trait may arise from the effects of the underlying alleles on other fitness components, generating net stabilizing selection on trait genetic variance and thus limiting evolution. Here, I look for the signature of stabilizing selection for a suite of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) in Drosophila serrata. Despite strong directional sexual selection on CHCs, genetic variance differed between high and low fitness individuals and was greater among the low fitness males for seven of eight CHCs. Univariate tests of a difference in genetic variance were non-significant but have low power. My results implicate stabilizing selection, arising through pleiotropy, in generating a genetic limit to the evolution of CHCs in this species.

Most of existing North American bridge infrastructure is reported to be deficient. Present infrastructure management mainly relies on qualitative evaluation, where bridge safety and serviceability are judged through routine visual inspection. With the successive increase in the number of severely deficient bridges and the limited available resources, it is crucial to develop a performance-based quantitative assessment evaluation approach that enables an accurate estimation of aging bridges ultimate and seismic capacities and ensures their serviceability. Reinforcement corrosion is the main cause of most of North American concrete infrastructure deterioration. Experimental investigations prove that reinforcement corrosion results in reduction of the steel reinforcement cross sectional area, localized (or global in very extreme cases) loss of bond action, concrete spalling, loss of core concrete confinement, and structural collapse. Field observations show that damage due to reinforcement corrosion in reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns is localized in highly affected zones by splash of deicing water. In this thesis, an innovative performance-based semi-quantitative assessment framework is developed using newly developed simplified nonlinear static and dynamic finite element analysis approaches. The framework integrates the bridge’s available design and after-construction information with enhanced inspection and additional material testing as sources for accurate input data. In order to evaluate the structural performance and the capacity of the corrosion-damaged bridge columns, four nonlinear static and dynamic analysis approaches have been developed: (i) simplified nonlinear sectional analysis (NLSA) approach that presents the basis of the analysis approaches to estimate the ultimate and seismic capacities, and serviceability of bridge columns; (ii) simplified nonlinear finite element analysis (NLFEA) approach, which enables estimating the ultimate structural capacity of corrosion-damaged RC columns; (iii) simplified hybrid linear/nonlinear dynamic finite element analysis (SHDFEA) approach to evaluate the serviceability of the bridge; and, (iv) simplified non-linear seismic analysis (SNLSA) approach to evaluate the seismic capacity of the bridge columns. The four analysis approaches are verified by comprehensive comparisons with available test experimental and analytical results. The proposed semi-quantitative assessment framework suggests three thresholds for each performance measure of the evaluation limit states to be decided by the bridge management system team. Case studies are presented to show the integrity and the consistency of using the proposed assessment framework. The proposed assessment framework together with the analysis approaches provide bridge owners, practicing engineers, and management teams with simplified and accurate evaluation tools, which lead to reduce the maintenance/rehabilitation cost and provide better safety, and reduce the variation in the data collected using only traditional inspection methods.

This thesis deals with the development and particularly the changes in the tax burden over limit personal income achieved in 2012 and 2013. Changes resulting from the Act No. 500/2012 Coll., Amending laws in connection with the reduction of fiscal deficits. The work contains a summary of the most interpretative problems that have emerged in the context of practical application of the solidarity tax increase during 2013. Subsequent clarification of problematic situations is explained by the results of the negotiations and Opinions of the General Financial Directorate and the Chamber of Tax Advisers. The aim of the thesis is to measure the effective tax rates for taxpayers model, follow-on-year comparisons and drawing up estimates of selected indicators. Models payers are based on regional statistics of labor cost and so they represent real employees with excessive income. The effective tax rate increased in the richest model by 9.06 percentage points. Total number of employees covered by the solidarity tax increase estimated at 64,954 people. Estimating revenues of the public budget for the fiscal year 2013 amounts to 845 million CZK and an estimate of the administrative costs taxpayers 12.4 million CZK.

Consider an iterated function system (IFS) that does not necessarily contract uniformly, but instead contracts on average after a finite number of iterations. Under some technical assumptions, previous work by Barnsley, Demko, Elton and Geronimo has shown that such an IFS has a unique invariant probability measure, whilst many (such as Peigné, Hennion and Hervé, Guivarc'h and le Page, Santos and Walkden) have shown that (for different function spaces) the transfer operator associated with the IFS is quasi-compact. A result due to Keller and Liverani allows one to deduce whether the transfer operator remains quasi-compact under suitable, small perturbations. The first part of this thesis proves a large deviations result for IFSs that contract on average using skew product transfer operators, a technique used by Broise to prove a similar result for dynamical systems. The remaining chapters introduce a notion of 'coupled IFSs', an analogue of the traditional coupled map lattices where the base, unperturbed behaviour is determined by an underlying dynamical system. We use transfer operators and Keller and Liverani's theorem to prove that quasi-compactness of the transfer operator is preserved for 'product IFSs' under small perturbations and for coupled IFSs. This allows us to prove a central limit theorem with a rate of convergence for the coupled IFS.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-18T17:46:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fulvia Leticia Perego Silva.pdf: 790751 bytes, checksum: 47f606ab3afcfc830c67cc0c81d1fda9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-22 / This research study aims to discuss the fight for the rule of environmental law, bringing with it a reflection of the scope and limits of environmental legal standard. We live in the twenty-first century in increasing changes and accelerated by economic and technological development, by engendering the environmental crisis and risk society facility. In this scenario, the state and the law must manifest in order to try to solve or at least develop possible solutions to combat the effects of risk society, fighting for the survival of mankind and ensure for future generations. The Brazilian environmental law is considered one of the most advanced in the world regarding environmental legal protection. However, the struggle for a state of effective environmental law, ie, the actual implementation of rules that change the existing social and environmental facts, are several limits. Then comes the central issue of this research project: what is the scope and what are the limits of environmental legal norm by a State Environmental Law? In trying to find answers to such a complex question, it was used in this work, as methodology, eminently literature, with the compass the fact that the struggle for a State Environmental Law comes necessarily from the existing dilemma between the depletion tax threshold the known economic models and the desired scope for environmental protection. Such a dilemma goes beyond the rule of law, since it necessarily involves great environmental importance of awareness of not only the State as a legal entity, but for all its members, ie the community which seamlessly must participate responsibly and ethics, realizing the desired range by environmental legal standard, that is, the effective protection of the environment. / O presente trabalho de pesquisa tem por objetivo discorrer sobre a luta pelo Estado de Direito Ambiental, trazendo consigo uma reflexão do alcance e do limite da norma jurídica ambiental. Vivemos no século XXI em transformações crescentes e aceleradas pelo desenvolvimento econômico e tecnológico, pelo engendramento da crise ambiental e instalação da sociedade de risco. Neste cenário, o Estado e o Direito precisam se manifestar com a finalidade de tentar resolver ou pelo menos elaborar possíveis soluções para combater os efeitos da sociedade de risco, lutar pela sobrevivência da humanidade e garantir a das futuras gerações. O ordenamento jurídico ambiental brasileiro é considerado um dos mais avançados do mundo quanto à tutela jurídica ambiental. No entanto, a luta por um Estado de Direito Ambiental efetivo, isto é, a aplicação real de normas que mudem os fatos sociais e ambientais vigentes, encontra vários limites. Surge, então, a problemática central do presente projeto de pesquisa: qual o alcance e quais os limites da norma jurídica ambiental por um Estado de Direito Ambiental? Na tentativa de encontrar respostas a tão complexa indagação, utilizou-se neste trabalho, como metodologia, a pesquisa eminentemente bibliográfica, tendo como bússola o fato de que a luta por um Estado de Direito Ambiental nasce necessariamente do dilema existente entre o limite imposto pelo esgotamento dos modelos econômicos conhecidos e o alcance pretendido pela proteção ambiental. Tal dilema vai além da norma jurídica, posto que passa obrigatoriamente pela tomada de consciência da grande importância ambiental não só pelo Estado como ente jurídico, mas por todos os seus integrantes, ou seja, a coletividade, que de forma integrada deve participar com responsabilidade e ética, concretizando o alcance pretendido pela norma jurídica ambiental, ou seja, a efetiva proteção do meio ambiente.

A norma que prescreve o cálculo de alvenaria estrutural de blocos vazados de concreto, NBR 10837:1989, encontra-se em fase de revisão, sendo que a principal alteração é a introdução do método dos estados limites no dimensionamento e na verificação dos elementos de alvenaria. Neste trabalho, estudam-se duas normas para alvenaria, a NBR 10837:1989 e EC 6:1996, e o texto proposto para revisão da NBR 10837. A escolha do EC 6:1996 se deu pela sua importância em relação à comunidade européia e porque muitas das prescrições contidas nessa norma foram adaptadas para o texto de revisão da NBR 10837. Quando necessárias, são realizadas comparações entre as duas normas e o texto de revisão, com o intuito de auxiliar no entendimento das implicações que a mudança de abordagem causará. Vários exemplos que simulam situações típicas de projeto, como compressão simples, flexão e cisalhamento, são apresentados. Com a variação dos diversos parâmetros envolvidos no dimensionamento dos elementos de alvenaria, é possível a elaboração de gráficos e ábacos. Desta forma consegue-se englobar uma grande variedade de situações, e a comparação entre as respostas obtidas com cada uma das normas e com o texto de revisão torna-se bem mais simples e precisa. Pretende-se, com este trabalho, contribuir para a introdução do método dos estados limites na norma de cálculo de alvenaria estrutural, bem como avaliar as mais importantes adaptações propostas. / The code that regulates the design of concrete blockwork structural masonry, NBR 10837:1989, is under revision phase. The main change is the introduction of limit state method for the design and verification of masonry elements. In this work, two masonry codes (NBR 10837:1989 and EC 6:1996) and a proposed revised text for the NBR 10837 are studied. The choice for EC 6:1996 is justified by its importance to european community and because many clauses of the revised text are adapted from that code. When necessary, comparisons between the two codes and revised text are carried out, to help the understanding of the changes implications. Some examples, that simulate typical design situation, such as axial compression, bending and shear are presented. A parametric study on the masonry elements design is carried out, allowing for the elaboration of graphs and abacus. Thus, various situations are explored, showing different results corresponding to each one of the codes and the revision text, in order to clarify the comparisons. The general aim of this work is help the introduction of the limit state method in the masonry code, and to evaluate the most important changes in the proposed revised text of the brazilian code.

Responding to the changes in the insurance environment of the past decade, insurance regulators globally have been revamping the valuation and capital regulations. This thesis is concerned with the design and analysis of statistical inference procedures that are used to implement these new and upcoming insurance regulations, and their analysis in a more general setting toward lending further insights into their performance in practical situations. The quantitative measure of risk that is used in these new and upcoming regulations is the risk measure known as the Tail Value-at-Risk (T-VaR). In implementing these regulations, insurance companies often have to estimate the T-VaR of product portfolios from the output of a simulation of its cash flows. The distributions for the underlying economic variables are either estimated or prescribed by regulations. In this situation the computational complexity of estimating the T-VaR arises due to the complexity in determining the portfolio cash flows for a given realization of economic variables. A technique that has proved promising in such settings is that of importance sampling. While the asymptotic behavior of the natural non-parametric estimator of T-VaR under importance sampling has been conjectured, the literature has lacked an honest result. The main goal of the first part of the thesis is to give a precise weak convergence result describing the asymptotic behavior of this estimator under importance sampling. Our method also establishes such a result for the natural non-parametric estimator for the Value-at-Risk, another popular risk measure, under weaker assumptions than those used in the literature. We also report on a simulation study conducted to examine the quality of these asymptotic approximations in small samples. The Haezendonck-Goovaerts class of risk measures corresponds to a premium principle that is a multiplicative analog of the zero utility principle, and is thus of significant academic interest. From a practical point of view our interest in this class of risk measures arose primarily from the fact that the T-VaR is, in a sense, a minimal member of the class. Hence, a study of the natural non-parametric estimator for these risk measures will lend further insights into the statistical inference for the T-VaR. Analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the generalized estimator has proved elusive, largely due to the fact that, unlike the T-VaR, it lacks a closed form expression. Our main goal in the second part of this thesis is to study the asymptotic behavior of this estimator. In order to conduct a simulation study, we needed an efficient algorithm to compute the Haezendonck-Goovaerts risk measure with precise error bounds. The lack of such an algorithm has clearly been noticed in the literature, and has impeded the quality of simulation results. In this part we also design and analyze an algorithm for computing these risk measures. In the process of doing we also derive some fundamental bounds on the solutions to the optimization problem underlying these risk measures. We also have implemented our algorithm on the R software environment, and included its source code in the Appendix.

When scuba diving under a physical overhead such as a cave, a mine, a shipwreck, or under a virtual overhead due to decompression requirements, it makes it impossible to safely access the surface in the event of an emergency. Therefore, diving with overhead is often described as technical diving. In this research, I address how technical divers in Outaouais, Quebec, practice this risky sport with unforgiving consequences. Based on fieldwork in Outaouais, I focus on divers, including myself, who perform trimix dives deeper than 200 feet. I argue that the process of becoming a deep diver is a lifelong journey where a diver learns to adapt to a milieu hostile to human life. The basic skills are acquired during classes to ensure that a novice diver will survive in this limit-environment. As divers bend the rules and take more risks to go deeper for longer lengths of time, they will go through a series of limit-experiences and near misses that are essential to their development and found to be regenerative. In turn, those limit-experiences and near-miss events shared with teammates create mutual trust. It is this trust that becomes the foundation of the team and allows the team to improve upon existing techniques and increase the depth and difficulty of their dives.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第21562号 / 理博第4469号 / 新制||理||1641(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科物理学・宇宙物理学専攻 / (主査)准教授 國友 浩, 教授 杉本 茂樹, 教授 田中 貴浩 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM