The master thesis is focused on the reliability of the human factor in the operation of the production machine. In the first part the basic legislative requirements for safety and reliability of work are presented. In the second part, the reliability of the human factor is discussed along with a description of selected methods for assessing the reliability of the human factor. The research section then concludes with a proposed methodology for human factors assessment for the manufacturing process. In the practical part, the proposed methodology is applied to the selected process, which includes risk identification and outputs from the selected methods. The thesis then concludes by recommending preventive measures to eliminate the identified risks.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第20771号 / 農博第2254号 / 新制||農||1055(附属図書館) / 学位論文||H29||N5091(農学部図書室) / 京都大学大学院農学研究科生物資源経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 梅津 千恵子, 教授 伊藤 順一, 准教授 浅見 淳之 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

<p>Foreign Direct investment (FDI) has been recognized as a vital source of development for African countries, which are mainly capital importing countries. This has led to a quest for effective regulation of the activities of foreign investors in a country while considering the profit making goals of the investors as well. As there is a need to strike a balance between the need to regulate entry and activities of investors and reaping the immense benefits of FDI such as growth and development. The regulation of FDI thus becomes important. However, there is no universal multilateral agreement on Investment (MAI) that binds most states oft the world. What we have is attempts at regional levels to regulate Investment uniformly. This quest has led to debates with many developing countries (Africa Inclusive) resisting attempts to formulate a MAI. This paper will start with an introduction of the importance of FDI as well as the various attempts that have been made to regulate FID on a multilateral level. Then the paper will go on to examine two Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) Botswana-China BIT on Promotion and Protection of Investments 2000,Czech-Tunisia BIT for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investment 1997, and two Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) - Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 1990 and the investment provisions of the U.S &ndash / Morocco Free Trade Agreement 2004, to identify those trends that are common to these agreements that have been entered into by African countries. It will examine these provisions in line with the rights and obligations they create for the investors as well as the host countries.</p>

L'objectif de ce mémoire est de jeter les bases d'un nouveau récit historique portant sur les relations internationales du Québec, en rupture partielle avec le récit traditionnel, essentiellement issu des écrits provenant de la science politique, qui décrit l'activité internationale du gouvernement québécois en cherchant dans les particularités de l'histoire québécoise elle-même les forces de changement. Ce faisant, nous tentons plutôt de montrer que l'histoire des relations internationales du Québec est inexorablement enchâssée dans l'histoire canadienne, dans l'histoire nord-américaine et surtout dans l'histoire du capitalisme et du néolibéralisme. Depuis le début de son existence en tant qu'entité politique moderne, le gouvernement québécois entretient des liens avec des gouvernements étrangers, l'intensité de ceux-ci étant function des grandes transformations affectant le système capitaliste international au grand complet. Vers la fin de la période 1867-1973, la politique internationale du gouvernement québécois est institutionnalisée politiquement et juridiquement grâce à la formulation de la doctrine Gérin-Lajoie, qui s'appuie sur les dispositions constitutionnelles propres au Canada pour élaborer la politique internationale québécoise. Dans la période 1973-1981, les relations internationales du Québec se focalisent davantage sur des questions économiques, telles que la quête de capitaux étrangers et la projection d'une image de marque positive sur les marchés étrangers. Puis, dans la période 1981-1994, l'activité internationale du Québec est marquée par le virage néolibéral qui affecte tous les gouvernements capitalistes dans le monde. Ainsi, l'appareil diplomatique du Québec est de plus en plus perçu comme un outil de promotion des exportations des entreprises québécoises et d'adaptation à l'augmentation de l'interdépendance économique, et de moins en moins comme un réseau de contacts politiques et culturels. Afin de faire cette démonstration, nous puisons essentiellement dans deux types de sources primaires : d'une part, des sources gouvernementales, dont les rapports annuels des différents ministères associés aux relations internationales du Québec et du Canada au fil de la période et les livres blancs de politique internationale qu'ils ont publié, et d'autre part, des publications issues du milieu des affaires, dont la revue Les Affaires, excellent baromètre de la mentalité dominante de la classe entrepreneuriale du Québec et du Canada francophone. / The objective of this thesis is to lay the foundations of a new narrative of the Quebec government's international relations, one distinct from the traditional account that emerged from the work of political scientists who have described the international activities of Quebec as essentially the product of its unique historical path. By contrast, this thesis aims to show that the history of Quebec's international relations must be understood as being embedded in the larger histories of Canada and North America, and especially in the histories of capitalism and neoliberalism. Since the beginning of its existence as a modern political entity, the Quebec government has nourished links with foreign governments, the intensity of which were determined by the transformations affecting the entire international capitalist order. Towards the end of the 1867-1973 period, the international policy of the Quebec government was institutionalized, both politically and juridically, through the formulation of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, which drew upon Canadian constitutional particularities as the basis of Quebec international policy. In the period framed by the 1972-73 and 1981-82 economic crises, Quebec's international relations focused increasingly on economic issues, notably the search for foreign investment and the projection of a positive brand image abroad. Then, in the period extending from the 1981-82 crisis to the conclusion of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Quebec's international activity was transformed by the neoliberal shift affecting all of the world's capitalist governments. Thus, Quebec's diplomatic apparatus came to be perceived as a tool for the promotion of Quebec business exports and the adaptation to the rise of economic interdependence and free trade, and decreasingly, as a network of political and cultural diplomatic ties. To demonstrate this, this thesis is based upon two main bodies of primary sources: first, government publications such as the annual reports issued by the different ministries that have been associated with Quebec's and Canada's international relations throughout the period, notably the white papers that they published; and secondly, publications produced by the business community, mainly Les Affaires magazine, an excellent barometer of the dominant mentality of the Quebec and French-Canadian business class.

Abstract. The aim of this M.A. thesis is to apply on the sample of five transcribed interviews with American politicians the typology of strategies devised by social psychologists P. Bull and K. Mayer (1993) for 'non-replies' of British politicians in the genre of a political interview and to determine whether this typology could be qualitatively correlated to specific linguistic means (the use of passive, pronominal shifts, hedges). The responses of politicians are examined within the CDA method also in relation to the macro-principles of evasion (dissimulation), coercion, legitimation and delegitimation, which are claimed to be valid in political discourse by P. Chilton (2004) in order to discover whether Bull and Mayer's social typology could be related to these principles and to the strategies of face-management (Brown and Levinson 1987). It is expected that politicians will boost their positive image in the interview and coerce the public in the agenda shift (Clayman, Heritage 2002) through every response in the interview. A question which according to Bull and Elliott (1996) consists of face threat is also expected to be attacked; quantitative results are presented which verify this assumption. In addition, as thirty strategies were observed to have been employed by Mrs Thatcher and Neil Kinnock in...

This thesis conducts a case study of how MARTA could address climate change adaptation through its transit asset management program. Two climate-modeling approaches are utilized to project potential future climate scenarios within MARTA's service area to identify significant climate stressors. These climate stressors are used to help identify vulnerable assets, operations, and locations in the MARTA system through several interviews conducted with key MARTA staff. The results of this basic climate vulnerability assessment are used to develop a series of short-term and long-term adaptation strategies that address these vulnerabilities. Next, a framework is proposed for addressing climate adaptation through MARTA's existing asset management program. Finally, the thesis proposes a general framework that other transit agencies could utilize to address climate adaptation through their asset management programs. The results of the climate vulnerability assessment indicate that the MARTA service area is likely to experience longer exposure to higher temperatures, flooding, wider variations in temperature, droughts, and more frequent high-wind events. Of these stressors, the MARTA system is most vulnerable to the effects of extreme and prolonged heat as well as flooding caused by intense precipitation events. Adaptation strategies to address these vulnerabilities include more frequent inspection of HVAC systems on buses and rail vehicles, increasing pumping capacity at underground rail stations, and incorporating low-impact developments into surrounded station areas. The limitations of the results of this case study and areas for further research from these limitations are also presented.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a relatively new mode with a wide range of applications that are still not well understood. Its explosive growth in developing and developed countries has increased its exposure but has led to mostly experimental implementation with mixed results. Therefore, better understanding about the reasons behind BRT implementation success and shortcomings is needed. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the state of BRT planning under different contexts by assessing how background theory and practical implementation of BRT systems compare. The scope is limited to current a detailed evaluation of 13 case studies in the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador chosen to represent some of the most succesful and established systems in the world. Data was obtaiend from previous research as well as direct reporting from agencies. The evaluation is performed through qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods classify BRT systems by characteristics and assess the relationship between their implementation and performance using the criteria defined in the literature. Quantitative methods build upon the previous analysis to more precisely assess their performance from both the users' and the transit providers' perspectives. This research found that BRT as a public transit mode has a large room of improvement in terms of design and implementation, since there is a significant variability in performance under similar conditions and a considerable gap between planning best practices and implementation. Also, that planning guidelines are still in an early stage of development and difer in scope and application to a particular context. It also found that its success is not conscribed to developing countries, but that its wide range of applications need to be better adapted to the context they should serve. The findings are significant because they dispel myths about the real potential of BRT and partially identify the reasons behind successes and failures of current systems, such as understimation of implementation times and lack of knowledge about component integration. Further research should approach these issues mainly in two complementary directions. First, it should focus on expanding the case study approach to the newer systems in operation once better data is available. Second,it should further advance the development of theoretical framwork for better operational design based on urban form, as well as an evaluation framework that puts more emphasis on user experience and sustainability. Finally, the findings reinforce that BRT is a distinct mode so that systems that do not meet its criteria should not be named as such.

In safety-critical, networked embedded systems, it is important that the way in which a fault(s) in one component of the system can propagate throughout the system to other components is analyzed correctly. Many real-world systems, such as modern aircrafts and automobiles, use large-scale networked embedded systems with complex behavior. In this work, we have developed techniques and a software tool, FauPA, that uses those techniques to automate fault-propagation analysis of large-scale, networked embedded systems such as those used in modern aircraft. This work makes three main contributions. 1. Fault propagation analyses. We developed algorithms for two types of analyses: forward analysis and backward analysis. For backward analysis, we developed two techniques: a naive algorithm and an algorithm that uses Datalog. 2. A system description language. We developed a language that we call Communication System Markup Language (CSML) based on XML. A system can be specified concisely and at a high-level in CSML. 3. A GUI-based display of the system and analysis results. We developed a GUI to visualize the system that is specified in CSML. The GUI also lets the user visualize the results of fault-propagation analyses.

過去一直堅持唯有GATT以及WTO全球性自由貿易體制才能為世界帶來最大福利的日本經歷二次大戰後四十多年的經濟榮景與一九九○年代的經濟停滯，在進入二十一世紀時決定以GATT、WTO多次回合談判為基礎，兼採區域合作、雙邊合作的「多層次途徑」來彌補全球性多邊貿易體制的不足。自由貿易協定（Free Trade Agreement, FTA）則是日本執行「多層次途徑」的具體手段。 筆者以羅伯特．吉爾平（Robert Gilpin）的「以國家為中心的現實主義」觀點，利用系統理論為研究架構，從日本受益於「舊金山體系」、提倡亞太區域合作、亞太經濟合作會議的召開到亞洲金融風暴重創亞太區域合作、中國與東協建立自由貿易區、日本緊接跟進的過程發現到日本的對外貿易政策與亞太地區的政治經濟權力結構之間有很明顯的對應關係。除了經濟利益，國家的戰略目標、與重要國家的外交關係都是日本政府考量的重要因素。日本現今的經濟繁榮多來自於美國、日本國家安全也依賴美國，日本因此歡迎美國在東亞地區的領導角色。但是歷史宿怨、領土糾紛、以及未來東亞區域整合的主導權使得中日之間的競爭無法避免，當中國決定以與東協建立自由貿易區作為改變東亞地區權力結構的起點，自由貿易協定就成為日本反制中國的方法，這也宣告東亞地區已經從美國獨自稱霸進入中日競逐東亞區域霸權的時代。

Foreign Direct investment (FDI) has been recognized as a vital source of development for African countries, which are mainly capital importing countries. This has led to a quest for effective regulation of the activities of foreign investors in a country while considering the profit making goals of the investors as well. As there is a need to strike a balance between the need to regulate entry and activities of investors and reaping the immense benefits of FDI such as growth and development. The regulation of FDI thus becomes important. However, there is no universal multilateral agreement on Investment (MAI) that binds most states oft the world. What we have is attempts at regional levels to regulate Investment uniformly. This quest has led to debates with many developing countries (Africa Inclusive) resisting attempts to formulate a MAI. This paper will start with an introduction of the importance of FDI as well as the various attempts that have been made to regulate FID on a multilateral level. Then the paper will go on to examine two Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) Botswana-China BIT on Promotion and Protection of Investments 2000,Czech-Tunisia BIT for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investment 1997, and two Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) - Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 1990 and the investment provisions of the U.S &ndash;Morocco Free Trade Agreement 2004, to identify those trends that are common to these agreements that have been entered into by African countries. It will examine these provisions in line with the rights and obligations they create for the investors as well as the host countries. / Magister Legum - LLM