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O Brasil é um dos países mais violentos do mundo, e essa realidade se reflete no ambiente escolar. O problema da violência na escola induz nos agentes de educação comportamentos que se contrapõem às metas de melhoria da qualidade do ensino. Por isso, a violência na escola é um dos candidatos a determinante da baixa qualidade educacional encontrada no Brasil. Este trabalho investiga se existe relação entre violência na escola e proficiência dos alunos no Brasil nos anos de 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 e 2013. Os resultados das regressões lineares e das regressões quantílicas incondicionais indicam que a ocorrência de um tipo de evento violento adicional está associada a uma redução na proficiência. Eles indicam também que há heterogeneidade na resposta dos alunos à violência na escola: a violência na escola parece afetar mais os alunos da quarta série, os alunos que se encontram na mediana da distribuição das notas e os alunos com melhor condição socioeconômica. Além disso, a violência na escola parece afetar mais a proficiência em Matemática em comparação com a proficiência em Língua Portuguesa, e a violência contra o professor tem efeitos tão ou mais deletérios que a violência entre os alunos. / Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the world, and this reality is part of the school environment. The problem of school violence hinders any possible progress in improving the quality of education. Indeed, school violence is a key element in explaining the low educational quality in Brazil. This research investigates the relationship between school violence and student achievement in Brazil in the years of 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013. The results of linear regressions and unconditional quantile regressions analysis show that an occurrence of an additional kind of violent event is associated with a reduction on student achievement. They also show that there is a high degree of heterogeneity in student responses to school violence: the school violence seems to affect more 4th graders, the students that are in the median of the distribution of the grades and the students with the best socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, school violence seems to affect more grades in Math than Portuguese, and the violence against teachers has effects as or more deleterious than the violence between students.

O Brasil é um dos países mais violentos do mundo, e essa realidade se reflete no ambiente escolar. O problema da violência na escola induz nos agentes de educação comportamentos que se contrapõem às metas de melhoria da qualidade do ensino. Por isso, a violência na escola é um dos candidatos a determinante da baixa qualidade educacional encontrada no Brasil. Este trabalho investiga se existe relação entre violência na escola e proficiência dos alunos no Brasil nos anos de 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 e 2013. Os resultados das regressões lineares e das regressões quantílicas incondicionais indicam que a ocorrência de um tipo de evento violento adicional está associada a uma redução na proficiência. Eles indicam também que há heterogeneidade na resposta dos alunos à violência na escola: a violência na escola parece afetar mais os alunos da quarta série, os alunos que se encontram na mediana da distribuição das notas e os alunos com melhor condição socioeconômica. Além disso, a violência na escola parece afetar mais a proficiência em Matemática em comparação com a proficiência em Língua Portuguesa, e a violência contra o professor tem efeitos tão ou mais deletérios que a violência entre os alunos. / Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the world, and this reality is part of the school environment. The problem of school violence hinders any possible progress in improving the quality of education. Indeed, school violence is a key element in explaining the low educational quality in Brazil. This research investigates the relationship between school violence and student achievement in Brazil in the years of 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013. The results of linear regressions and unconditional quantile regressions analysis show that an occurrence of an additional kind of violent event is associated with a reduction on student achievement. They also show that there is a high degree of heterogeneity in student responses to school violence: the school violence seems to affect more 4th graders, the students that are in the median of the distribution of the grades and the students with the best socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, school violence seems to affect more grades in Math than Portuguese, and the violence against teachers has effects as or more deleterious than the violence between students.

O Brasil é um dos países mais violentos do mundo, e essa realidade se reflete no ambiente escolar. O problema da violência na escola induz nos agentes de educação comportamentos que se contrapõem às metas de melhoria da qualidade do ensino. Por isso, a violência na escola é um dos candidatos a determinante da baixa qualidade educacional encontrada no Brasil. Este trabalho investiga se existe relação entre violência na escola e proficiência dos alunos no Brasil nos anos de 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 e 2013. Os resultados das regressões lineares e das regressões quantílicas incondicionais indicam que a ocorrência de um tipo de evento violento adicional está associada a uma redução na proficiência. Eles indicam também que há heterogeneidade na resposta dos alunos à violência na escola: a violência na escola parece afetar mais os alunos da quarta série, os alunos que se encontram na mediana da distribuição das notas e os alunos com melhor condição socioeconômica. Além disso, a violência na escola parece afetar mais a proficiência em Matemática em comparação com a proficiência em Língua Portuguesa, e a violência contra o professor tem efeitos tão ou mais deletérios que a violência entre os alunos. / Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the world, and this reality is part of the school environment. The problem of school violence hinders any possible progress in improving the quality of education. Indeed, school violence is a key element in explaining the low educational quality in Brazil. This research investigates the relationship between school violence and student achievement in Brazil in the years of 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013. The results of linear regressions and unconditional quantile regressions analysis show that an occurrence of an additional kind of violent event is associated with a reduction on student achievement. They also show that there is a high degree of heterogeneity in student responses to school violence: the school violence seems to affect more 4th graders, the students that are in the median of the distribution of the grades and the students with the best socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, school violence seems to affect more grades in Math than Portuguese, and the violence against teachers has effects as or more deleterious than the violence between students.

This thesis consists of work conducted in two separate studies, evaluating the performance of passive systems for treating wastewater effluents. The first study involved the characterization of three wastewater stabilization ponds (WSPs) providing secondary and tertiary treatment for municipal wastewater at a facility in Amherstview, Ontario, Canada. Since 2003, the WSPs have experienced excessive algae growth and high pH levels during the summer months. A full range of parameters consisting of: pH, chlorophyll-a (chl-a), dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, alkalinity, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), conductivity, nutrient species, and organic matter measures; were monitored for the system and the chemical dynamics in the three WSPs were assessed through multivariate statistical analysis. Supplementary continuous monitoring of pH, chl-a, and DO was performed to identify time-series dependencies. The analyses showed strong correlations between chl-a and sunlight, temperature, organic matter, and nutrients, and strong time dependent correlations between chl-a and DO and between chl-a and pH. Additionally, algae samples were collected and analyzed using metagenomics methods to determine the distribution and speciation of algae growth in the WSPs. A strong shift from the dominance of a major class of green algae, chlorophyceae, in the first WSP, to the dominance of land plants, embryophyta – including aquatic macrophytes – in the third WSP, was observed and corresponded to field observations during the study period. The second study involved the evaluation of the performance and chemical dynamics of a hybrid-passive system treating leachate from a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. Over a three year period, monitoring of a full range of parameters consisting of: pH, DO, temperature, alkalinity, ORP, conductivity, sulfate, chloride, phenols, solids fractions, nutrient species, organic matter measures, and metals; was conducted bi-weekly and the dataset was analyzed with time series and multivariate statistical techniques. Regression analyses identified 8 parameters that were most frequently retained for modelling the five criteria parameters (alkalinity, ammonia, chemical oxygen demand, iron, and heavy metals), on a statistically significant level (p < 0.05): conductivity, DO, nitrite, organic nitrogen, ORP, pH, sulfate, and total volatile solids. / Thesis (Master, Civil Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2013-10-27 05:29:20.564

In the first chapter of this thesis, we investigate the impact of human capital and wage structure on the gender pay in a panel of European countries using a newly available and appropriate database for cross-country comparisons and a comparable methodology for each country. Our first question is : What role do certain individual characteristics and choices of working men and women play in shaping the cross-country differences in the gender pay gap? What is the exact size of the gender pay gap using the “more appropriate” database available for our purpose? Giving that there are mainly only two harmonized data-sets for comparing gender pay gap throughout Europe: the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and the European Structure of Earning Survey (ESES). Each database having its shortages: the main weakness of the ECHP is the lack of perfect reliability of the data in general and of wages in particular. However the main advantage of this database is the panel-data dimension and the information on both households and individuals. The data of the ESES is, on the contrary, of a very high standard but it only covers the private sector and has a cross-sectional dimension. Furthermore only few countries are currently available : Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Ireland and Italy. We use the European Structure of Earning Survey (ESES) to analyse international differences in gender pay gaps in the private sector based on a sample of five European economies: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Using different methods, we examine how wage structures, differences in the distribution of measured characteristics and occupational segregation contribute to and explain the pattern of international differences. Furthermore, we take account of the fact that indirect discrimination may influence female occupational distributions. We find these latter factors to have a significant impact on gender wage differentials. However, the magnitude of their effect varies across countries. In the second chapter, we analyse the persistence of the gender pay differentials over time in Europe and better test the productivity hypothesis by taking into account unobserved heterogeneity. Our second question is : What is the evolution of the pay differential between men and women over a period of time in Europe? And what is the impact of unobserved heterogeneity? The researcher here provides evidence on the effects of unobserved individual heterogeneity on estimated gender pay differentials. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), we present a cross-country comparison of the evolution of unadjusted and adjusted gender pay gaps using both cross-section and panel-data estimation techniques. The analysed countries differ greatly with respect to labour market legislation, bargaining practices structure of earnings and female employment rates. On adjusting for unobserved heterogeneity, we find a narrowed male-female pay differential, as well as significantly different rates of return on individual characteristics. In particularly, the adjusted wage differential decreases by 7 per cent in Belgium, 14 per cent in Ireland, between 20-30 per cent Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain and of 41 per cent and 54 per cent in the UK and in Denmark respectively. In the third chapter, we investigate causes of the gender pay gap beyond the gender differences in observed and unobserved productive characteristics or simply the sex. Explanations of the gender pay gap may be the penalty women face for having children. Obviously, the motherhood wage penalty is relevant to larger issues of gender inequality given that most women are mothers and that childrearing remains a women’s affair. Thus, any penalty associated with motherhood but not with fatherhood affects many women and as such contributes to gender inequalities as the gender pay gap. Furthermore, the motherhood wage effect may be different along the wage distribution as women with different earnings may not be equal in recognising opportunities to reconcile their mother’s and earner’s role. This brings us to our third question. Our third question is : What is the wage effect for mothers of young children in the household? And does it vary along the wage distribution of women? This chapter provides more insight into the effect of the presence of young children on women’s wages. We use individual data from the ECHP (1996-2001) and both a generalised linear model (GLM) and quantile regression (QR) techniques to estimate the wage penalty/bonus associated with the presence of children under the age of sixteen for mothers in ten EU Member States. We also correct for potential selection bias using the Heckman (1979) correction term in the GLM (at the mean) and a selectivity correction term in the quantile regressions. To distinguish between mothers according to their age at the time of their first birth, wage estimations are carried out, separately, for mothers who had their first child before the age of 25 (‘young mothers’) and mothers who had their first child after the age of 25 (‘old mothers’). Our results suggest that on average young mothers earn less than non-mothers while old mothers obtain a gross wage bonus in all countries. These wage differentials are mainly due to differences in human capital, occupational segregation and, to a lesser extent, sectoral segregation between mothers and non-mothers. This overall impact of labour market segregation, suggests a “crowding” explanation of the family pay gap – pay differential between mothers and non-mothers. Nevertheless, the fact that we still find significant family pay gaps in some countries after we control for all variables of our model suggests that we cannot reject the “taste-based” explanation of the family gap in these countries. Our analysis of the impact of family policies on the family pay gap across countries has shown that parental leave and childcare policies tend to decrease the pay differential between non-mothers and mothers. Cash and tax benefits, on the contrary, tend to widen this pay differential. Sample selection also affects the level of the mother pay gap at the mean and throughout the wage distribution in most countries. Furthermore, we find that in most countries inter-quantile differences in pay between mothers and non-mothers are mainly due to differences in human-capital. Differences in their occupational and sectoral segregation further shape these wage differentials along the wage distribution in the UK, Germany and Portugal in our sample of young mothers and in Spain in the sample of old mothers. In the fourth chapter, we analyse the combined effect of motherhood and the family status on women’s wage. Our fourth question is : Is there a lone motherhood pay gap in Europe? And does it vary along the wage distribution of mothers? Substantial research has been devoted to the analysis of poverty and income gaps between households of different types. The effects of family status on wages have been studied to a lesser extent. In this chapter, we present a selectivity corrected quantile regression model for the lone motherhood pay gap – the differential in hourly wage between lone mothers and those with partners. We used harmonized data from the European Community Household Panel and present results for a panel of European countries. We found evidence of lone motherhood penalties and bonuses. In our analysis, most countries presented higher wage disparities at the top of the wage distribution rather than at the bottom or at the mean. Our results suggest that cross-country differences in the lone motherhood pay gap are mainly due to differences in observed and unobserved characteristics between partnered mothers and lone mothers, differences in sample selection and presence of young children in the household. We also investigated other explanations for these differences such as the availability and level of childcare arrangements, the provision of gender-balanced leave and the level of child benefits and tax incentives. As expected, we have found significant positive relationship between the pay gap between lone and partnered mothers and the childcare, take-up and cash and tax benefits policies. Therefore improving these family policies would reduce the raw pay gap observed.

Aquesta memòria és un recull de diverses desigualtats d'interès principalment en regressió i anàlisi multivariant, les quals en alguns casos s'il·lustren i interpreten gràfícament.En els primers capítols es presenten resultats aparentment desconcertants, com per exemple la desigualtat de Hamilton-Roudledge-Cuadras. els quals ens poden avisar dels perills de l'ús, a la Ileugera, de la regressió lineal múltiple i altres tècniques multivariants.S'estudia també la paradoxa de Simpson i una versió multivariant com és la desigualtat en distàncies Mahalanobis més gran que Pearson.S'ha dedicat també un capítol a l'estudi d'un mètode molt general d'anàlisi multivariant presentat per Cuadras, Atkinson i Fortiana que suposa implícitament la construcció dedensitats de probabilitat a partir de distàncies.En la darrera part de la memòria es presenten desigualtats per a la variància d'una funció d'una variable aleatòria que tenen aspecte semblant a la desigualtat de Cramér-Rao, altres relacionades amb la distància de Wasserstein i altres desjgualtats que s'obtenen de la propietat d'acotació de la raó de versemblança.

Diese Dissertation untersucht einen möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen dem beschriebenen klinischen Verlauf bei Patienten mit konstitutiv aktivierenden TSH-Rezeptormutationen und der gemessenen in vitro Aktivität. Konstitutiv aktivierende Mutationen finden sich als somatische Mutationen in autonomen Adenomen und als Keimbahnmutationen bei Patienten mit sporadischer bzw. familiärer nicht-autoimmuner Hyperthyreose. Die in vitro Aktivität der zu Grunde liegenden TSH-Rezeptormutationen wird mit Hilfe der Linearen Regressions-Analyse bestimmt. Dies ist ein Verfahren, welches die basale Produktion des second messenger cAMP (Cyclo-Adenosinmonophosphat) misst, unter Berücksichtigung der Expression des TSH-Rezeptors. Die Analyse der Krankheitsverläufe der sporadischen nicht-autoimmunen Hyperthyreose zeigt keinen eindeutigen Bezug zur gemessenen in vitro Aktivität. Es besteht jedoch eine höhere in vitro Aktivität bei Mutationen, die sowohl bei der nicht-autoimmunen sporadischen Hyperthyreose und in autonomen Adenomen zu finden sind, im Vergleich zu ausschließlich familiären Mutationen. Dies entspricht auch dem klinischen Eindruck. Für die wenigen bekannten Fälle der sporadischen nicht-autoimmunen Hyperthyreose wurden dramatische Verläufe mit häufigen Rückfällen unter medikamentöser Therapie und zahlreichen Komplikationen (z.B. mentale Retardierung, Kraniosynostose, zerebrale Ventrikulomegalie, beschleunigte Knochenreifung) beschrieben.