Requirements, key artifacts of requirements engineering, are a fundamental part of any software development, used by the different software development roles in their activities, such as designing the interface for a feature, its development, and the creation of test cases made by testers. This study aims to investigate the impact of misalignment in the use, understanding, and intent of requirements between the requirements engineers that create the requirements and other software roles that use them in their work activities and betweendevelopers and testers in their software development and testing activities. The impacted areas that this study focuses on are the work activities of the different roles involved with requirements in the development process, their workload, and their well-being and morale.The two research objectives are:i) How do software development practitioners define the quality of requirements?ii) How do the perceived quality of requirements impact the work of the different roles involved in the software development process?This study was performed as a descriptive interview study that follows the case study guidelines written by Runeson and Höst [14] at a sub-organization of a Nordic bank that developed their own web and apps. The data collection comprises interviewing 20 practitioners:requirements engineers, developers, testers, and newly employed developers, with fiveinterviewees from each group.The results of this study show that there are, in fact, different views across different roles of what makes a requirement good. There are also some similarities between the general characteristics described by the practitioners that they perceive make requirements good and the characteristics described in the ISO [21] and IREB [26] standards.The practitioners stated that, in general, they experienced negative feelings, more work,and overhead communication when they worked with requirements they perceived to be bad. The practitioners also described in general positive effects on their work and feelings when they worked with requirements that they perceived to be good.A conclusion that can be drawn from the study is that the quality of requirements and the requirements engineering process matter to software development and can have big impacts on the morale and effectiveness, and efficiency of the different roles that work with the requirements.

Magister Commercii - MCom / Over the 1ast eight years up to 1989, a new business phenomenon has manifested itself in South Africa. During this period, the so-ca 11ed "factory shop" concept has developed into one of the fastest growing industries in both the manufacturing and commercial sectors. In South Africa, factory shops have initially established in the Cape Peninsula.4,5. The nature of these shops is such that their creation may be attributed to the clothing industry itself ;" This trend originated in about 1980 at a few clothing manufacturers in Cape Town, inter alia, Desiree, Readywear, Atlantic Knitting Mills. Originally these factory shops were open for limited hours, I usually over lunch-time and on only one Saturday per month. They were strictly limited to and for the sole benefit of I the staff of those firms. Gradually, however, family and later friends and acquaintances of these staff members became aware of the so-called bargain prices at these stores. Both supply and demand played important roles in the development of factory shops. For example, increasing pressure on management to supply larger quantities of these merchandise items at bargain prices, as well as the fact that clothing factories had excess stock which was difficult to clear through the normal distribution channels. Factory owners recognized and seized this opportunity to reduce stock at little additional cost. From their inception, factory shops have had a significant influence on the turnover and profitability of the retail clothing industry. This trend is documented in reports by the organ i zed trade, 7 ,B where reference has been made to the influence of these factory shops and where independent clothing retailers have been calling for a plan of action for protect i on against the encroachment by these factory shops on their (the clothing retailers') markets. However, up to that stage, no in-depth study or formal research was done to justify such action for protection. The ref 0reitwa s felt that" An empirical stud y of the development of factory shops in the clothing industry in the Cape Peninsula" was needed to acquire an objective view of the state of affairs.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20785号 / 経博第557号 / 新制||経||282(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 諸富 徹, 教授 劉 徳強, 教授 依田 高典 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM

In this work, we look into the practical applicability of three joint quantile and expected shortfall regression backtests. The strict, auxiliary, and intercept ESR backtests are applied to the historical log returns of the OMX Stockholm 30 market-weight price index. We estimate the conditional variance using GARCH models for various rolling window lengths and refitting frequencies. We are particularly interested in the rejection rates of the one-sided intercept ESR backtest as it is comparable to the current standard of backtests. The one-sided test is found to perform well when the conditional variance is estimated by either the GARCH(1,1), GJR-GARCH(1,1), or EGARCH(1,1) coupled with student’s t-innovation residuals and a rolling window size of 1000 days.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) offer a new era of local-scale environmental monitoring where access to invaluable aerial data no longer comes at a substantial cost. This provides the opportunity to vastly expand the ability to detect natural hazards impacts, observe environmental conditions, quantify restoration efforts, track species propagation, monitor land surface changes, cross-validate existing platforms, and identify hazardous situations. While UASs have the potential to accelerate understanding of natural processes, much of the research using UASs has applied current remote sensing image processing techniques without questioning the validity of these in UAS applications. With new scientific tools comes a need to affirm that previous techniques are still valid for the new systems. To this end, the objective of the current study is to provide an assessment regarding the use of current remote sensing image processing techniques in UAS applications. The research reported herein finds that atmospheric effects have a statistically significant impact on low altitude UAS imagery. Correcting for these external factors affecting the imagery was successful using an empirical line calibration (ELC) image correction technique and required little modification for use in a complex UAS application. Finally, it was found that classification performance of UAS imagery was reliant on training sample size more than classification technique, and that training sample size requirements are larger than previous remote sensing studies suggest.

This thesis addresses a long-standing puzzle in empirical econometrics: Does the size distribution of income matter in the aggregate consumption function? Current opinion on whether distribution matters is divided. There is also a lack of consensus (among those who believe distribution effects exist) on the nature of such effects; that is, whether a decrease or an increase in income inequality is needed to stimulate aggregate demand. In this thesis, the previous or existing tests are challenged on the grounds that they do not properly take into account the causal link between the variability of the marginal, not the average, propensity to consume (with respect to the income level) and the existence of distribution effects. This particular link is taken care of, however, if one tests for the linearity (in income) of the micro relation underlying one's aggregate consumption function. The rejection of the linearity hypothesis will establish the existence of distribution effects. Ex post, if the nonlinear relation is such that the marginal propensity to consume declines with income, it also follows that an equalization in the income distribution produces greater aggregate consumption. The theoretical contribution of this thesis lies in the clarification of these issues. On the empirical side, this thesis cautions against the casual use of the term "distribution effects". In the current income-current expenditure framework of the Keynesians, it refers to "the effect of a redistribution of real disposable income" on aggregate real consumers' expenditure. In the Permanent Income Hypothesis framework, however, it could mean either "the effect of a redistribution of real disposable income" or "the effect of a redistribution of real permanent income" on aggregate real consumption. In this thesis, the distributions of real disposable income and real permanent income are alternatively assumed to follow the lognormal density, and two conclusions are empirically determined: I. The distribution of real disposable income matters in the current income-current expenditure framework---this result is statistically significant at a 10% level after the correction for serial correlation and simultaneity bias. In particular, the estimates indicate that the marginal propensity to consume declines with the level of real disposable income and, hence, a decrease in inequality would stimulate aggregate demand. II. The elasticity of consumption out of real permanent income is unity; therefore, the distribution of real permanent income does not matter in the Permanent Income Hypothesis framework---this result is statistically. significant at all conventional levels of significance both before and after the correction for serial correlation. Both findings are based on aggregative time-series data for Canada. The consumer unit in this thesis is an individual income-recipient, and the data period is 1947-1976. Maximum-likelihood procedures have been used in the estimation, with proper allowance for across-parameter constraints. In the event of correction for serial correlation, the autocorrelation coefficient is constrained to the open-interval (+1,-1). The results are also double-checked by examining many avenues that might affect the nature of the outcomes. Another contribution of this study is the compilation of data on the distribution of pre-tax personal income (in current dollars) in Canada under the lognormality hypothesis. The parameters of this distribution are determined using the minimum chi-square method. Estimates of the variance (of logarithms of income) parameter show a slight increase in income inequality over the period 1946 to 1976. The data on this parameter are used to approximate the variance of logarithms for the distribution of real disposable income (while establishing result I) and also the same for the distribution of real permanent income (while establishing the result II). / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has fully implemented the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide for pavement design but has been using primarily level-three design inputs obtained from correlations to aggregate base materials developed at the national level. UDOT was interested in investigating correlations between laboratory measurements of resilient modulus, California bearing ratio (CBR), and other material properties specific to base materials commonly used in Utah; therefore, a statewide testing program was needed. The objectives of this research were to 1) determine the resilient modulus of several representative aggregate base materials in Utah and 2) investigate correlations between laboratory measurements of resilient modulus, CBR, and other properties of the tested materials. Two aggregate base materials were obtained from each of the four UDOT regions. Important material properties, including particle-size distribution, soil classification, and the moisture-density relationship, were investigated for each of the sampled aggregate base materials. The CBR and resilient modulus of each aggregate base material were determined in general accordance with American Society for Testing and Materials D1883 and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials T 307, respectively. After all of the data were collected, several existing models were evaluated to determine if one or more of them could be used to predict the resilient modulus values measured in this research. Statistical analyses were also performed to investigate correlations between measurements of resilient modulus, CBR, and other properties of the tested aggregate base materials, mainly including aspects of the particle-size distributions and moisture-density relationships. A set of independent predictor variables was analyzed using both stepwise regression and best subset analysis to develop a model for predicting resilient modulus. After a suitable model was developed, it was analyzed to determine the sensitivity of the model coefficients to the individual data points. For the aggregate base materials tested in this research, the average resilient modulus varied from 16.0 to 25.6 ksi. Regarding the correlation between resilient modulus and CBR, the test results show that resilient modulus and CBR are not correlated for the materials tested in this research. Therefore, a new model was developed to predict the resilient modulus based on the percent passing the No. 200 sieve, particle diameter corresponding to 30 percent finer, optimum moisture content, maximum dry density (MDD), and ratio of dry density to MDD. Although the equation may not be applicable for values outside the ranges of the predictor variables used to develop it, it is expected to provide UDOT with reasonable estimates of resilient modulus values for aggregate base materials similar to those tested in this research.