Transferências Condicionadas de Renda (TCR), como o Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) no Brasil, são cada vez mais adotadas no mundo para romper com o ciclo de transmissão da pobreza, por meio de transferências monetárias a famílias pobres, condicionadas a investimentos em capital humano. Como cerca de 76% da população pobre do mundo vive em áreas rurais, e a incidência de pobreza é maior em localidades remotas florestadas, os TCR são frequentemente implementados junto a populações semiautárquicas de países em desenvolvimento. Assim, essas transferências têm aumentado a disponibilidade de recursos monetários junto a essas populações, como certos povos indígenas. Nesses contextos, evidências prévias mostram que a monetarização das economias locais pode ter efeitos positivos, negativos ou nulos na dedicação de tempo às atividades de subsistência e no consumo de recursos naturais. Porém, existem duas lacunas nesse conhecimento. Primeiro, estudos prévios avaliaram os efeitos conjuntos de diversas fontes de renda, muito embora estas variem nos investimentos de tempo necessários, de nulos (e.g., TCR e aposentadorias) a altos (e.g., salários e comércio de artesanato). Segundo, a maior parte da literatura assume, ainda que implicitamente, que as decisões na base das escolhas humanas são racionais e motivadas, sobretudo, por maximizar a renda ou, eventualmente, minimizar os riscos. Porém, evidências empíricas e avanços teóricos indicam que as decisões nem sempre são racionais, tanto por limitações cognitivas que levam a outros processos decisórios (e.g., heurísticas), como porque são motivadas por outros fatores (e.g., prazer, emoção, normas sociais). Portanto, esta dissertação teve por objetivo investigar se o aumento da renda monetária de transferências do PBF estava associado a diferenças no investimento de tempo em atividades de subsistência (agricultura, caça, pesca e coleta) e no consumo de produtos derivados ou não dessas atividades pelo povo indígena Kisêdjê da Amazônia brasileira. Além disso, investigou se o hedonismo e a contabilidade mental seriam motivadores dessas decisões. Três hipóteses foram testadas. Primeira, diferentes fontes de renda monetária devem produzir efeitos diversos sobre o tempo dedicado pelos Kisêdjê a atividades de subsistência. Segunda, os efeitos do PBF devem variar de acordo com o quanto as pessoas apreciam cada atividade de subsistência, i.e., o hedonismo é importante para prever investimentos de tempo nessas atividades. Terceira, os Kisêdjê realizam contabilidade mental, i.e., separam o dinheiro em diferentes contas mentais e, portanto, fontes alternativas de renda monetária devem produzir padrões de consumo distintos e fontes de renda de baixo esforço, como o PBF, devem privilegiar o consumo de alimentos ou de bens supérfluos. Para tal, o estudo adotou um delineamento observacional em painel, compreendendo todos (242) os indivíduos adultos (>=16 anos) de 2 comunidades. Os dados foram coletados em dois períodos em 2016 e 2017, por meio de survey por entrevistas estruturadas e experimento em contabilidade mental, e observação direta de alocação de tempo (random-interval instantaneous sampling), sendo analisados por técnicas de estatística descritiva e modelos mistos de regressão. Os resultados mostraram, primeiro, que as transferências do PBF não tiveram efeitos no tempo dedicado às atividades de subsistência, embora outras rendas monetárias (e.g., trabalho regular, aposentadoria) tenham ora aumentado, ora reduzido a probabilidade de investimento de tempo. Segundo, o hedonismo foi mais importante que as fontes de renda monetária para explicar o esforço alocado na atividade de caça para os homens. Por fim, não foram observadas evidências de contabilidade mental, ou seja: (i) o padrão de consumo não diferiu segundo a fonte de renda, mas somente entre homens e mulheres; (ii) com fontes de renda de baixo (e.g. PBF) ou alto esforço, os Kisêdjê estiveram menos propensos a consumir bens supérfluos. Os resultados parecem sugerir que os efeitos do PBF nas atividades de subsistência e no consumo dos Kisêdjê são baixos, muito embora a cobertura ampla tenha dificultado a avaliação. Quanto aos motivadores, os resultados apontam para a importância de investigar outros determinantes além da renda. / Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), such as the Bolsa Família Program (BFP) in Brazil, have increasingly been adopted worldwide to break the cycle of poverty transmission, by transferring cash to poor families, conditional on investments in human capital. As about 76% of the worlds poor live in rural areas, and poverty incidence is higher in remote forested localities, CCTs are frequently implemented in semi-autarkic communities of developing countries. Thus, these transfers have increased the availability of cash income resources to semi-autarkic populations, such as certain indigenous peoples. In this context, prior evidence shows the monetization of local economies has been associated with positive, negative, or null effects on the time allocated to subsistence activities and consumption of natural resources. However, there are two knowledge gaps. First, previous studies evaluated the combined effects of several income sources, although these sources vary on the necessary time investments, from null (e.g., CCTs) to high (e.g., wages and handicrafts trade). Second, most previous studies assume, although implicitly, that decisions which base peoples choices are rational and motivated, above all, on income maximization or, occasionally, risk minimization. However, empirical evidence and theoretical advances indicate that decisions are often not always, either because of cognitive limitations that lead to other decision-making processes (e.g., heuristics), or because they are motivated by other factors (e.g., pleasure, emotion, social norms). Therefore, this dissertation aimed to investigate whether increased levels of cash income from the BFP transfers were associated with differences in time investments in subsistence activities (agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering) and in the consumption of Kisêdjê indigenous people from the Brazilian Amazon. Additionally, we investigated if hedonism and mental accounting were the motivators behind these decisions. Three hypotheses were tested. First, alternative income sources should produce different effects on the time allocated by the Kisêdjê to subsistence activities. Second, the effects of BFP should vary, depending on how much people appreciated each subsistence activity, i.e. hedonism is important to predict time investments. Third, Kisêdjê do mental accounting and, therefore, different cash income sources should distinct consumption patterns and low-effort activities such as BFP should increase the likelihood of consuming superfluous food or goods. To do that, we adopted an observational panel design, including all (242) adult individuals (>= 16 years) in 2 communities. Data were gathered in two periods in 2016 and 2017, through a survey based on face-to-face interviews and experiment in mental accounting, direct observations of time allocation by random-interval instantaneous sampling, and were analysed by descriptive statistical techniques and mixed-effects regressions. The results indicated that, first, BFP cash transfers had no effect on the time spent on subsistence activities, although other income sources (e.g., wages, pensions) in certain cases increased, while in others decreased the likelihood of time investments. Second, hedonism was important than cash income sources in explaining the effort allocated to hunting for men. Finally, we did not observe evidences of mental accounting, i.e.: (i) consumption patterns did not differ across income sources, but only between men and women; (ii) with low-effort (e.g., BFP) or high-effort income sources, the Kisêdjê were less likely to consume superfluous goods. Our results suggest that the effects of BFP transfers on subsistence activities and consumption are low, although the high rate of coverage has impaired our analyses. As regards motivations, the results point to the importance of investigating determinants other than income.

The aim of the thesis is to analyse and compare two mass gymnastic exercises in terms of spatial choreography, the Spartakiade exercise for younger pupils from 1980 and the mass exercise of the Czech Association of Sport for all teenage pupils, girls and boys from 2012 called Between stars. The thesis also maps the development of mass gymnastic exercises in Czechoslovakia and later in the Czech Republic and generally describes the mass gymnastic exercise and the principles of its creation. The practical part of the work deals with Spartakiade exercise for younger pupils from 1980 and mass exercise of the Czech Association of Sport for all teenage pupils, girls and boys from 2012. The aim of the practical part is to characterise and compare the synchronised exercises in terms of place of the exercise, number of participants, sex, length of the exercise, background music and its intelligibility for the given age, clothing, equipment, spatial choreography and movement difficulty for individuals as well as evaluate content based on creation principles. KEYWORDS mass gymnastic exercise, Spartakiade, the Sokol Slet ( mass gathering of gymnasts organised by the Czech Sokol Movement ), younger teenage pupils, choreography

In this thesis, we consider wireless ad hoc and sensor networks where energy matters. Indeed, sensor nodes are characterized by a small size, a low cost, an advanced communication technology, but also a limited amount of energy. This energy can be very expensive, difficult or even impossible to renew. Energy efficient strategies are required in such networks to maximize network lifetime. We distinguish four categories of strategies: 1. Energy efficient routing, 2. Node activity scheduling, 3. Topology control by tuning node transmission power and 4. Reduction of the volume of information transferred. Our contribution deals with energy efficient routing and node activity scheduling. For energy efficient routing, the idea consists in reducing the energy spent in the transmission of a packet from its source to its destination, while avoiding nodes with low residual energy. The solution we propose, called EOLSR, is based on the link state OLSR routing protocol. We show by simulation that this solution outperforms the solution that selects routes minimizing the end-to-end energy consumption, as well as the solution that builds routes based on node residual energy. We then show how we can improve the benefit of energy efficient routing using cross layering. Informa- tion provided by the MAC layer improves the reactivity of the routing protocol and the robustness of routes. Moreover, taking into account the specificities of some applications like data gathering allows the routing protocol to reduce its overhead by maintaining routes only to the sink nodes. Concerning node activity scheduling, since the sleep state is the least power consuming state, our aim is to schedule node state between sleeping and active to minimize energy consumption while ensuring network and application functionalities. We propose a solution, called SERENA, based on node coloring. The idea is to assign a color to each node, while using a small number of colors and ensuring that two nodes with the same color can transmit without interfering. This color is mapped into a slot in which the node can transmit its messages. Consequently, each node is awake during its slot and the slots granted to its one-hop neighbors. It sleeps the remaining time. We show how this algorithm can adapt to different application requirements: broadcast, immediate acknowledgement of unicast transmissions... The impact of each additional requirement is evaluated by simulation. An originality of this work lies in taking into account real wireless propagation conditions. Color conflicts are then possible. A cross-layering approach with the MAC layer is used to solve these conflicts. We also show how cross-layering with the application layer can improve the coloring per- formance for data gathering applications. This work has been done for the ANR OCARI project whose aim is to design and implement a wireless sensor network for applications in harsh environments such as power plants and war- ships. The network layer including SERENA and EOLSR has been specified and is now under implementation.

新聞記者的日常工作可視為一資訊蒐集行為，在資訊蒐集的過程中需要運用許多資源，其中，人脈扮演重要角色，然而目前從社會網絡角度出發，關照記者如何運用網絡中所蘊含的資源以協助記者日常新聞資訊蒐集活動的研究卻不多，因此，本研究企圖了解新聞記者在資訊蒐集場域中的人脈網絡樣貌，存在哪些資源類型及如何採取交換策略。 在研究方法與研究對象的選擇上，本研究從個案著手，以一位報社地方記者作為研究對象，藉由參與觀察法及深度訪談蒐集田野資料三十天。 本研究將蒐集而來的資料以量化及質化方法續作分析，繪製兩種網絡圖像，展現新聞中顯見的消息來源以及在蒐集過程中運用的人脈，結果發現許多在過程中取得資源的對象其實隱沒於新聞稿中。 本研究進一步發現，人脈可以提供不同類型的資源，包括一般資訊、珍稀資訊、知識經驗、中介資源、引薦資源以及權力資源，皆有助於記者的新聞資訊蒐集活動，除此之外，強連帶與弱連帶各有其資源優勢，強連帶較常提供珍稀資訊與引薦資源，而弱連帶則最常提供一般性的資訊以及中介性資源。 總括而言，新聞記者的新聞資訊蒐集活動倚靠人脈，但只有少數的人脈會被展現在新聞報導之中，許多人脈的運作隱藏於幕後，且不同連帶關係的人脈對象在過程中提供不同類型的資源與幫助，新聞記者必須辨識並活用之。而為了和不同連帶關係的人脈取得資源，記者會採取不同的社會交換策略。和強連帶的資源交換策略包括給予資訊資源、版面資源、知識資源、中介性資源、服務性資源以及信任性資源，特別的是，平常便會交換情感性資源以維持雙方關係；而面對弱連帶對象，當一般報酬無法滿足對方時，可藉由人脈中當作橋樑影響弱連帶以達成資訊蒐集目的。 / Information gathering is one of the major tasks in journalistic work. Among the resources that journalists employ to gather news, social ties is an important factor that contributes to journalistic work. However, it is rarely known how social network was used as journalistic resources in daily news-gathering activities. This thesis aims to explore the above issues by employing a field study. This field study is based on a case of newspaper reporter who is assigned to local beat in Central Taiwan. The researcher made participatory observation and intensive interviews in a period of 30 days. Data was collected and kept in field journals. The data gathered were analyzed by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Two social graphs were plotted to show how the news sources distributed in both news reported and daily journals. This paper further found that journalist benefits of social ties are quite diverse; social ties not only facilitates gathering of routine information, but also exclusive news, knowledge, experience, referral resources, power and trust. Strong and weak ties also provide different types of resources. In conclusion, journalists contact many social ties in their daily information gathering tasks. Only very few appear on news reporting, while many were hidden behind the scene. These social ties provide reliable aid in news gathering activities. And a journalist has to identify, activate the connections, and make exchanges to get help according to the types of ties and resources needed.

The thesis investigates how Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) and Queueing Theory (QT) techniques help manage mass gathering (MG) crowds. The techniques are applied to Hajj MG, which is one of the most complex annual MG, with a focus on its challenging Tawaf ritual. The objective is to develop a Tawaf Decision Support System (DSS) to better understand Tawaf crowd dynamics and discover decisions that lead to superior performance. TawafSIM is an ABMS model in the DSS, which simulates macro-level Tawaf crowd dynamics through micro-level pilgrim modeling to explore the impact of crowd characteristics, facility layout, and management preferences on emergent crowd behaviours with respect to throughput, satisfaction, health, and safety. Whereas, TawafQT is a QT model in the DSS to explore the impact of pilgrim arrival rate and Tawaf throughput on expected arrival, departure, and waiting times along with average queue length in the Tawaf waiting area. The thesis provides several contributions, including the following. First, it is the only Tawaf research to use a hybrid ABMS and QT approach. Second, TawafSIM is a comprehensive Tawaf simulator. It incorporates features for pilgrim characteristics, facility design, and management preferences. It calculates eight metrics for Tawaf performance, which includes one for throughput, three for satisfaction, one for health, and three for safety. It is the only Tawaf simulator to estimate satisfaction and spread of infectious disease. It conducts 42 simulation experiments in 12 categories. It generates observations for emergent, tipping point, expected, and counter intuitive behaviours. It recommends a default scenario as the best decision along with a small subset of alternative scenarios, which provide above average Tawaf performance. It generates a Tawaf Crowd Management Guide to better understand Tawaf crowd dynamics and how to pursue above average Tawaf performance under different conditions. Third, TawafQT is the only study of the Tawaf waiting area. It uses an accurate queueing model with finite source, single service, and PH type distribution, which is not only applicable to the Tawaf and other Hajj related queueing systems but also to any queueing system, which has finite population and single service characteristics.

The issue of gas flaring and the attendant environmental effects have become a common sight in the Niger Delta. Apart from being a wastage of natural resources, it is a menace to the global existence of man. The incidences of acid rain and the disruption of economic life of the locals, basically farming and fishing, have led to consistent and irresistible agitation by the people of the Niger Delta for an end to gas flaring. The consistent release of harmful gases through gas flaring, with devastating effect on the surrounding environment of the Niger Delta region is discussed in this work. This dissertation examines why successive governments have not succeeded in their quest for a solution to gas flaring; policies and regulations are not being effectively implemented, and why despite the fact that flaring has been outlawed in Nigeria since 1st January 1984, it is still going on 24 years after. Flaring continues unabated undermining the consequences it has on the people and the effects on climate change. Interviews and case studies were used to examine the factors responsible for the non implementation of government policies and regulations, and why the consistent extension of flare-out deadline. Countries with outstanding results were examined in order to draw a baseline for the Nigeria situation. The research revealed that the Nigerian government has not enforced environmental regulations effectively because of its interests in the business of the multinationals. In addition there has been the dependence of environmental monitoring and regulatory agencies on government funding. This has drastically affected the proficiencies of the control and the insignificant penalties imposed on companies that flare gas. The need for government to play the role of an umpire rather than business partner with the multinationals is therefore of paramount importance. It is also pertinent that the regulatory and monitoring agencies be independent of government's supervision. More stringent measures, (ranging from more cost per a thousand standard cubic feet of gas flared to closure of platform(s) and/or outright withdrawal of license), should also be put in place to serve as deterrent to erring oil companies. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

The thesis investigates how Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) and Queueing Theory (QT) techniques help manage mass gathering (MG) crowds. The techniques are applied to Hajj MG, which is one of the most complex annual MG, with a focus on its challenging Tawaf ritual. The objective is to develop a Tawaf Decision Support System (DSS) to better understand Tawaf crowd dynamics and discover decisions that lead to superior performance. TawafSIM is an ABMS model in the DSS, which simulates macro-level Tawaf crowd dynamics through micro-level pilgrim modeling to explore the impact of crowd characteristics, facility layout, and management preferences on emergent crowd behaviours with respect to throughput, satisfaction, health, and safety. Whereas, TawafQT is a QT model in the DSS to explore the impact of pilgrim arrival rate and Tawaf throughput on expected arrival, departure, and waiting times along with average queue length in the Tawaf waiting area. The thesis provides several contributions, including the following. First, it is the only Tawaf research to use a hybrid ABMS and QT approach. Second, TawafSIM is a comprehensive Tawaf simulator. It incorporates features for pilgrim characteristics, facility design, and management preferences. It calculates eight metrics for Tawaf performance, which includes one for throughput, three for satisfaction, one for health, and three for safety. It is the only Tawaf simulator to estimate satisfaction and spread of infectious disease. It conducts 42 simulation experiments in 12 categories. It generates observations for emergent, tipping point, expected, and counter intuitive behaviours. It recommends a default scenario as the best decision along with a small subset of alternative scenarios, which provide above average Tawaf performance. It generates a Tawaf Crowd Management Guide to better understand Tawaf crowd dynamics and how to pursue above average Tawaf performance under different conditions. Third, TawafQT is the only study of the Tawaf waiting area. It uses an accurate queueing model with finite source, single service, and PH type distribution, which is not only applicable to the Tawaf and other Hajj related queueing systems but also to any queueing system, which has finite population and single service characteristics.

The issue of gas flaring and the attendant environmental effects have become a common sight in the Niger Delta. Apart from being a wastage of natural resources, it is a menace to the global existence of man. The incidences of acid rain and the disruption of economic life of the locals, basically farming and fishing, have led to consistent and irresistible agitation by the people of the Niger Delta for an end to gas flaring. The consistent release of harmful gases through gas flaring, with devastating effect on the surrounding environment of the Niger Delta region is discussed in this work. This dissertation examines why successive governments have not succeeded in their quest for a solution to gas flaring; policies and regulations are not being effectively implemented, and why despite the fact that flaring has been outlawed in Nigeria since 1st January 1984, it is still going on 24 years after. Flaring continues unabated undermining the consequences it has on the people and the effects on climate change. Interviews and case studies were used to examine the factors responsible for the non implementation of government policies and regulations, and why the consistent extension of flare-out deadline. Countries with outstanding results were examined in order to draw a baseline for the Nigeria situation. The research revealed that the Nigerian government has not enforced environmental regulations effectively because of its interests in the business of the multinationals. In addition there has been the dependence of environmental monitoring and regulatory agencies on government funding. This has drastically affected the proficiencies of the control and the insignificant penalties imposed on companies that flare gas. The need for government to play the role of an umpire rather than business partner with the multinationals is therefore of paramount importance. It is also pertinent that the regulatory and monitoring agencies be independent of government's supervision. More stringent measures, (ranging from more cost per a thousand standard cubic feet of gas flared to closure of platform(s) and/or outright withdrawal of license), should also be put in place to serve as deterrent to erring oil companies. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Over the last decade, the rapid growth and adoption of the World Wide Web has further exacerbated user needs for e±cient mechanisms for information and knowledge location, selection, and retrieval. How to gather useful and meaningful information from the Web becomes challenging to users. The capture of user information needs is key to delivering users' desired information, and user pro¯les can help to capture information needs. However, e®ectively acquiring user pro¯les is di±cult. It is argued that if user background knowledge can be speci¯ed by ontolo- gies, more accurate user pro¯les can be acquired and thus information needs can be captured e®ectively. Web users implicitly possess concept models that are obtained from their experience and education, and use the concept models in information gathering. Prior to this work, much research has attempted to use ontologies to specify user background knowledge and user concept models. However, these works have a drawback in that they cannot move beyond the subsumption of super - and sub-class structure to emphasising the speci¯c se- mantic relations in a single computational model. This has also been a challenge for years in the knowledge engineering community. Thus, using ontologies to represent user concept models and to acquire user pro¯les remains an unsolved problem in personalised Web information gathering and knowledge engineering. In this thesis, an ontology learning and mining model is proposed to acquire user pro¯les for personalised Web information gathering. The proposed compu- tational model emphasises the speci¯c is-a and part-of semantic relations in one computational model. The world knowledge and users' Local Instance Reposito- ries are used to attempt to discover and specify user background knowledge. From a world knowledge base, personalised ontologies are constructed by adopting au- tomatic or semi-automatic techniques to extract user interest concepts, focusing on user information needs. A multidimensional ontology mining method, Speci- ¯city and Exhaustivity, is also introduced in this thesis for analysing the user background knowledge discovered and speci¯ed in user personalised ontologies. The ontology learning and mining model is evaluated by comparing with human- based and state-of-the-art computational models in experiments, using a large, standard data set. The experimental results are promising for evaluation. The proposed ontology learning and mining model in this thesis helps to develop a better understanding of user pro¯le acquisition, thus providing better design of personalised Web information gathering systems. The contributions are increasingly signi¯cant, given both the rapid explosion of Web information in recent years and today's accessibility to the Internet and the full text world.

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