Yim Tsz-ho. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-49). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Local Polynomial Modeling --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Local Polynomial Fitting --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Methodology --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- The kernel K --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- The bandwidth h --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- The order p --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2 --- Estimation of Conditional Density --- p.11 / Chapter 3 --- Bandwidth Selection --- p.14 / Chapter 3.1 --- Rule of Thumb --- p.14 / Chapter 3.2 --- Bootstrap Bandwidth Selection --- p.15 / Chapter 3.3 --- A Cross-Validation Method --- p.16 / Chapter 4 --- A Theoretical Justification --- p.18 / Chapter 4.1 --- Proof of (4.1) --- p.19 / Chapter 4.2 --- Proof of (4.2) --- p.22 / Chapter 5 --- Simulation Studies --- p.25 / Chapter 6 --- Real Data Applications --- p.38 / Chapter 6.1 --- Case Study With Canadian Lynx Data.............................. --- p.38 / Chapter 6.2 --- Case Study With U.S. Twelve-Month Treasury Bill Data.......... --- p.41 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusions --- p.45 / Bibliography --- p.47

Nos processos industriais envolvendo eletrólise, como na produção de alumínio, cobre, zinco, níquel, manganês, carbeto de silício, cloro e seus derivados, as correntes envolvidas em geral atingem patamares que excedem o valor nominal de um único semicondutor, exigindo a associação de componentes em paralelo com uma distribuição de corrente equilibrada. Este trabalho apresenta uma análise comparativa da distribuição de corrente em associações de semicondutores em paralelo em vinte retificadores de alta potência com diferentes tipos de arquitetura física de barramentos. A particularidade deste estudo é a medição simultânea das correntes em todos os semicondutores de todos os ramos do retificador obtendo-se uma imagem da distribuição real de correntes do conversor. / The industrial electrolytic processes to produce, aluminum, cooper, zinc, nickel, manganese, silicon carbide, chlorine and its derivative, require current values which greatly exceed the capability of single rectifying devices and paralleled combinations of semiconductors or equipments are necessary. This study evaluated through a comparative analyzes twenty rectifiers, with different busbar geometries, in order to verify the current distribution in paralleled devices. The differential of this study is the simultaneous measurement of currents in all semiconductors of each branch in order to obtain a real representation of the rectifiers current distribution.

Thesis (MPH.) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / Introduction: During mid-November 2008, eleven acute watery diarrhoea cases with the suspicion of cholera like symptoms were detected by a diarrhoea surveillance system at Musina Hospital in Vhembe district - Limpopo Province, South Africa. These cases included eight Zimbabwean and three South African citizens. Laboratory test performed on stool specimens confirmed Vibrio cholerae serogroup 01 Ogawa as the causative pathogen for these reported acute watery diarrhoea cases. Within eight weeks of its onset, the outbreak spread to all the five districts of Limpopo. So far between 15 November 2008 and 01 June 2009, the cumulative number of cases of acute watery diarrhoea reported from five districts of Limpopo Province stands at 4634 including 30 confirmed cholera deaths with an overall case fatality rate of 0.65%. Of these reported cases, Vibrio cholerae has been laboratory confirmed in 656 samples. Methodology: A database was received from the Limpopo Department of Health having all reported cholera cases during the 2008 and 2009 outbreak in Limpopo Province. The data was analysed using STATA statistical software version 12 for windows (STATA Corporation, College Station, Texas). Results: The cholera affected all ages, but the geographic distribution of the disease was very heterogeneous in Limpopo Province. The highest and lowest numbers of cases were reported in Capricorn and Mopani districts, respectively. The majority of the cases 55% (N=2 542) were females. Children less than five years of age 14.2% (N=652) were less affected by the disease. About 73.8% of the cases were aged between O and 44 years. The first four weeks of cholera outbreak strictly included a day-to-day admixture of Zimbabweans and South Africans presenting in the health facilities. The outbreak then affected most South Africans after week five of the epidemic. Conclusion: The cholera outbreak has affected all the five districts of Limpopo Province in South Africa, and new cases continued to be reported until first week of June 2009. There was a link between the Zimbabwean and South African cholera outbreak in Limpopo province.

Field work for the study was conducted in Logan Canyon and the valley at the base of that canyon in Cache County, Utah, during the three summer months of both 1968 and 1969, Microtus pennsylvanicus, found only in the valley, inhabits wet marshy areas. Microtus longicaudus is found in mixed deciduous woods a long the Logan River in the canyon. Microtus richardsoni, which occurs only at the higher elevations, inhabits the subalpine meadows . Microtus montanus inhabits mesic grassy fields in both the valley and Logan Canyon and also inhabits a mixed deciduous woods and tall canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) growing adjacent to impounded waters in the canyon. Foods eaten by Microtus pennsylvanicus and Microtus montanus were studied from analysis of stomach and caecal contents. Both species appear selective in their feeding habits. Plants eaten by Microtus montanus in larger percentages, than they occurred in the field, included Agropyron trachycaulum, Agropyron Smithii, Festuca elator, and Melilotys officinalis, whereas the very abundant Poa pratensis and Glyceria elata were eaten in very small amounts. Plants eaten by Microtus pennsylvanicus in larger amounts, than they were present in the field, included Agropyron trachycaulum, Phalaris arundinacea, and Equisetum kansanum; and the very abundant Carex nebraskensis, Carex lanuginosa, and Juncus balticus were eaten in lesser amounts. Food preference tests for Microtus montanus, taken from a habitat composed primarily of Phalaris arundinacea, demonstrated that these voles eat large amounts of that grass not because they prefer it but because of its extremely high abundance

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<p> </p><p>The aim of this essay is to examine if the Swedish Major labels are moving towards making their catalogue available on different platforms rather than their traditional distribution of music. The new technology has really stirred things up for the major labels and file-sharing has been a problem for a long time. The labels have a history of fighting new formats instead of embracing them and listen to what their consumers actually want. We have found that the majors now are in the leading edge of music distribution due to technology and that is a first. We have focused this essay on if the consumption of music has changed the distribution of it or the other way around and found that people have changed their ways of consuming music over the years and the labels have always been forced to adapt. This time the labels are more involved in how they want their customers to consume their product but it is still the consumption of music that is the driving force in how music is distributed. The availability of music is greater than ever before and the choices we as consumers are faced with every day are far more than we can rationally process which leads to a dissatisfaction caused by all the options we didn’t choose. We want to have all the music ever released just a click away but we can’t listen to everything because it would simply take too long. What we discovered is that the major labels in the past tried to copy the illegal downloading program and adding a pay station. This kind of business concept has worked fairly well but in this day and age they are working with a music distributor that is better than any of the illegal alternatives out there. Due to the new distribution ways and new money revenues we believe on the strengths of people with great insight of the business that the major label are moving towards a bright future with probably greater rate of return than ever before.</p>

This dissertation considers two approaches for testing hypotheses in unbalanced mixed linear models. The first approach is to construct a design with some type of structure or "partial" balance, so that some of the optimal properties of a completely balanced design hold. It is shown that for a particular type of partially balanced design certain hypothesis tests are optimal. The second approach is to study how the unbalancedness of a design affects a hypothesis test in terms of level and power. Measures of imbalance are introduced and simulation results are presented that demonstrate the relationship of the level and power of a test and the measures. The first part of this thesis focuses on error orthogonal designs which are a type of partially balanced design. It is shown that with an error orthogonal design and under certain additional conditions, ANOVA F-tests about certain linear combinations of the variance components and certain linear combinations of the fixed effects are uniformly most powerful (UMP) similar and UMP unbiased. The ANOVA F-tests for the variance components are also invariant, so that the tests are also UMP invariant similar and UMP invariant unbiased. For certain simultaneous hypotheses about linear combinations of the fixed effects, the ANOVA F-tests are UMP invariant unbiased. The second part of this thesis considers a mixed model with a random nested effect, and studies the effects of an unbalanced design on the level and power of a hypothesis test of the nested variance component being equal to zero. Measures of imbalance are introduced for each of the four conditions necessary to obtain an exact test. Simulations are done for two different models to determine if there is a relationship between any of the measures and the level and power for both a naive test and a test using Satterthwaite's approximation. It is found that a measure based on the coefficients of the expected mean squares is indicative of how a test is performing. This measure is also simple to compute, so that it can easily be employed to determine the validity of the expected level and power. / Graduation date: 1999

The purpose of this research was to determine a causal model of factors affecting age integrated/age segregated neighborhood preference during retirement. Data were anaLzed for 1299 preretirers in four states: Idaho, Michigan, Oregon, and Utah, collected in a mail survey in 1990 by the Western Regional Agricultural Experiment Station Committee (W-176). Preference for age integrated/age segregated neighborhoods during the first ten years of retirement was directly influenced by tenure preference (p=.00, B=.210). Those who preferred homeownership during retirement chose age integrated neighborhoods during their first ten years of retirement. Preference for age integrated/age segregated neighborhoods after ten years of retirement was significantly influenced by family income (P=.03, B=.096), suitability of home size (p=.02, B=.094), and tenure preference (p=.00, B=.155). Those who were economically well off indicated a predisposition for age integrated neighborhoods as did those who preferred homeownership and those who felt they had the right size homes for retirement. Indirect effects were also observed among the exogenous and intervening variables and age integrated/age segregated neighborhood preference during the first ten years and after ten years of retirement. Older preretirees preferred to retire in the community (p=.00, B= .125) and this preference for the present community influenced the choice of preferred homeownership during retirement (p=.00, B=.205). Those who favored homeownership indicated a preference for age integrated neighborhoods both during the first ten years (p=.00, B=.210) and after ten years of retirement (p=.00, B=.155). These interrelationships lead to the assumption that older respondents prefer to age in place as they showed a preference to retire in the present community and for homeownership. The findings of this research will be beneficial and of interest to retirees who are trying to create a suitable and affordable environment for themselves and communities will be enriched by their participation in economic and service functions. Community developers who are striving to boost their local economies can attract retirees by providing to the needs of the elderly consumers. / Graduation date: 1993

As VLSI technology moves into the Ultra-Deep Sub-Micron (UDSM) era, manufacturing variations, power supply noise and temperature variations greatly affect the performance and yield of VLSI circuits. Clock Distribution Network (CDN), which is one of the biggest and most important nets in any synchronous VLSI chip, is especially sensitive to these variations. To address this problem variability-aware analysis and optimization techniques for VLSI circuits are needed. In the first part of this thesis an analytical bound for the unwanted skew due to interconnect variation is established. Experimental results show that this bound is safer, tighter and computationally faster than existing approaches. This bound could be used in variation-aware clock tree synthesis.The second part of the thesis deals with optimizing a given clock tree to minimize the unwanted skew variations. Non-tree CDNs have been recognized as a promising approach to overcome the variation problem. We propose a novel non-tree CDN obtained by adding cross links in an existing clock tree. We analyze the effect of the link insertion on clock skew variability and propose link insertion schemes. The non-tree CDNs so obtained are shown to be highly tolerant to skew variability with very little increase in total wire-length. This can be used in applications such as ASIC design where a significant increase in the total wire-length is unacceptable.

<p>The major aim of this study is to determine and compare the distribution of bacteria and actinobacteria in Marion Island terrestrial habitats.</p>