Generic programming is a programming methodology that aims at producing reusable code, defined independently of the data types on which it is operating. To achieve this goal, that particular code must rely on a set of requirements known as concepts. The code is only functional for the set of data types that fulfill the conditions established by its concepts. Generic programming can facilitate code reuse and reduce testing. Generic programming has been embraced mostly in the C++ community; major parts of the C++ standard library have been developed following the paradigm. This thesis is based on a study (by Garcia et al.) on generic programming applied to other languages (C#, Eiffel, Haskell, Java and ML). That study demonstrated that those languages are lacking in their support for generic programming, causing diffculties to the programmer. In this context, we investigate the new object-oriented language Scala. This particular language appealed to our interest because it implements "member types" which we conjecture to fix some of the problems of the languages surveyed in the original study. Our research shows that Scala's member types are an expressive language feature and solve some but not all of the problems identified in the original study (by Garcia et al.). Scala's members types did not resolve the problem of adding associated types to the parameter list of generic methods. This issue led to repeated constraints, implicit instantiation failure and code verbosity increase. However, Scala's member types enabled constraint propagation and type aliasing, two significantly useful generic programming mechanisms.

Published Article / The issue of Generic Skills has received considerable attention over the past few years as universities, in their response to calls for accountability, need to articulate and demonstrate the achievement of these (Barrie, 2005: 1). In recent years, employers and their representatives consistently demand that their employees must possess a range of personal and intellectual attributes. These include attributes beyond those traditionally made explicit in programmes of study in higher education institutions (Harvey, 2000:7). Universities describe these graduate qualities differently, resulting in a variety of terms used to target the same attribute (Barrie, 2006:218). This diversity of descriptions prompts questions as to the extent to what stakeholders in the Radiography programme understand by the term generic graduate skills. One of the major goals was to explore what the stakeholders involved in academic and work-based learning as well as radiography students identified as generic graduate skills radiography students must obtain during their studies to prepare them adequately for the world of work. Findings from this study agreed on the importance of higher education to be informed of expectations from employees in order to respond to the need of preparing students adequately for future job tasks and contributions to society. In addition to this. the study also identified the particular generic skills stakeholders regard essential for students entering the profession.

Le fonctionnement des systèmes cellulaires est largement conditionné par leurs topologies, c'est-à-dire les compartiments (caractérisés chacun par un type) qui les composent et les dispositions relatives les uns par rapport aux autres de ces compartiments. Cependant, on constate généralement une relative faiblesse dans la prise en compte de la topologie dans certains outils à base de règles pour la modélisation des processus biologiques, ces outils intégrant par ailleurs de bonnes capacités de simulation et d'analyse de modèles. Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse proposent une approche de modélisation qui consiste à définir les modèles en considérant d'une part un ensemble de règles génériques traduisant les comportements des types de compartiments en fonction des molécules et d'autre part l'abstraction d'une compartimentation cellulaire par un graphe d'échanges qui donne en particulier les voisinages existant entre les différents compartiments. Ces deux éléments sont couplés, ce qui permet d'obtenir un modèle intermédiaire qui est le résultat de l'instanciation des règles génériques en fonction des contraintes issues du graphe d'échanges. La traduction de ce modèle intermédiaire vers le langage de règles d'un outil cible (choisi entre BIOCHAM et PATHWAY LOGIC) constitue la dernière étape de modélisation et permet d'utiliser les capacités de simulation et d'analyse de modèles de cet outil. / The functioning of cellular systems is widely conditioned by their topology, that is compartments (characterized each by a type) which compose them and the relative position of these compartments with regard to the others. However, we notice generally a relative weakness in the consideration of the topology in certain tools for the rule-based modeling of biological processes, these tools integrating besides good capacities of models simulation and analysis. The works presented in this thesis propose an approach which consists in defining the models by considering on one hand a set of generic rules translating the behavior of the types of compartments according to molecules and on the other hand the abstraction of a cellular compartmentation by an exchanges graph which gives in particular the neighborhood existing between the various compartments. These two elements are coupled, what allows the obtention of an intermediate model which is the result of the instantiation of the generic rules according to the constraints stemming from the exchanges graph. The translation of this intermediate model towards the language of rules of a target tool (chosen between BIOCHAM and PATHWAY LOGIC) constitutes the last stage of the modeling and allows using the capacities of simulation and analysis of the chosen tool.

Generic brands have been part of the society for more than 30 years. The consumers of these brands have changed through the years and so have their reasons to buy them. Some questions can be raised: are generic brands perceived as low quality brands? Are low in-come people the consumers of generic brands? There-fore, this study is aimed to discover the factors that in-fluence consumer decisions on purchasing generic brands along with consumer characteristics based on the Swedish supermarkets in Jönköpings Län.

<p>Generic brands have been part of the society for more than 30 years. The consumers of these brands have changed through the years and so have their reasons to buy them. Some questions can be raised: are generic brands perceived as low quality brands? Are low in-come people the consumers of generic brands? There-fore, this study is aimed to discover the factors that in-fluence consumer decisions on purchasing generic brands along with consumer characteristics based on the Swedish supermarkets in Jönköpings Län.</p>

People increasingly face the choice of branded or generic medicines and the decision sometimes is a difficult one. This research work was designed to determine the perceived benefits of generic versus branded medicines. People’s perception of things, does affect their choices. It is almost a decade since generics were introduced to the healthcare system in South Africa and very few studies have been done to access whether the idea of having generic medicines is working. A survey was carried out and the results were analysed using a logistic regression. The results showed that females knew more about generic medicines than males. The variables of cost, safety and quality of medicines still remain a determining factor for the purchase of medicines either generic or branded. In addition, people’s income was seen to influence the type of medicines that they buy. It was seen that there was a direct relationship between the income of respondents and their preferences when it came to the purchase of medicine. Access to medical aid was confirmed to predispose people to opt for branded medicine against the cheaper generics since they are not paying directly. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

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Studier har visat att det finns ett gap mellan de egenskaper som arbetsgivare eftersöker och de personliga attribut som studenter besitter. Generic skills är personliga förmågor hos en individ som är användbara inom alla yrkesroller och nivåer i karriären och det är en mycket relevant aspekt av begreppet anställningsbarhet. Anställningsbarhet definierades ursprungligen som förmågan att få ett arbete, behålla detta arbete, samt att kunna finna ett nytt arbete om det skulle krävas. Studier har visat att generic skills utvecklas via kontakt med arbetslivet, till exempel i form av deltids- och säsongsanställningar, men en annan viktig metod för att utveckla studenters generic skills är arbetsintegrerade insatser under utbildningen. Syftet med studien var att undersöka huruvida arbetsgivares syn på vilka egenskaper som är viktiga i rekryteringssammanhang stämmer överens med de egenskaper som studenterna tror sig besitta, samt om studenternas uppfattning överensstämmer med de egenskaper som arbetsgivare faktiskt värdesätter. Studien bestod av två datainsamlingar. I den ena datainsamlingen deltog 74 företag inom Trestadsområdet och i den andra undersökningen deltog 466 studenter vid Högskolan Väst. Det huvudsakliga resultatet visade att studenterna tror sig besitta två av de tre, av arbetsgivarna, högst skattade egenskaperna, nämligen ansvarstagande och arbetsmoral. Dessa två egenskaper var även de som studenterna antog att arbetsgivare skulle värdesätta. Resultatet från studien stämmer inte överens med tidigare forskning. Slutsatsen blev att generic skills värdesätts i olika mån beroende på sammanhanget. Avslutningsvis diskuteras det huruvida Högskolan Västs arbetsintegrerade insatser har lett till att studenterna tror sig besitta ett flertal av de egenskaper som arbetsgivare faktiskt eftersöker / Research has indicated that there is a gap between which skills employer’s seek and what attributes student’s actually possess. Generic skills are defined as personal attributes, which are useful in all kinds of professions, at all levels in the career. Generic skills is an inherent part of any discussion about employability. Employability was originally defined as the ability to gain, maintain and regain employment. Studies have shown that generic skills are developed by real world experience, and due to this, work-integration during the education is crucial in order to develop generic skills. The aim of the present study was to compare whether employer’s perception of generic skills are consistent with the skills that students actually possess and if the students perceptions are the same as the one’s that employers value the most. The present study consisted of two surveys. In the first study 74 employers participated, and in the second survey 466 students at the University West participated. The main result showed that students believed they possessed two out of three, by the employers, top-rated skills (responsibility and work ethic) and these two skills where consistent with the student’s perceptions of which skills employers would value. This was not consistent with previous research. The conclusion was that generic skills may be valued differently due to the context. 2 Finally, it was debated if the high level of work-integration at University West could have led to the fact that the students possess several skills that employers value

A difference field M , is a field with a distinguished endomorphism, is called a generic difference field if it is existentially closed among the models of the theory of difference fields. In the language Ld, by a theorem of Hrushovski, it is characterized by the following: M is an algebraically closed field, s is an automorphism of M, and if W and V are varieties defined over M such that W is a subset of VU s (V ) and the projection maps W to V and W to s(V ) are generically onto, then there is a tuple a in M such that (a, s ( a)) in W. This thesis is a survey on the theory of generic difference fields, called ACFA, which has been studied by Angus Macintyre, Van den Dries, Carol Wood, Ehud Hrushovski and Zoe Chatzidakis. ACFA is the model completion of the theory of algebraically closed difference fields. It is very close to having full quantifier elimination, but it doesn&#039 / t. We can eliminate quantifiers down to formulas with one quantifier and hence obtain the completions of ACFA. This entails the decidability of the theory ACFA as well as its extensions obtained by specifying the characteristic. The fixed field of s is a pseudo-finite field

Physicians often continue to prescribe brand-name drugs to their patients even when less expensive generic equivalents are available. In a 1994 study, Judith Hellerstein advances two hypotheses to explain this behavior. First, doctors may consciously conclude that certain brand-name drugs impart a relative therapeutic benefit that outweighs their higher cost. Second, physicians may choose to prescribe brand-name drugs without evidence of therapeutic superiority if neither they nor their insured patients bear the increased cost of these drugs. The second hypothesis implies that moral hazard is evident in physicians' prescribing behavior. Hellerstein's findings support neither hypothesis, but her estimation equation does not explicitly capture the effects of brand-name/generic price differentials and information diffusion on the probability of generic prescription. The author adapts Hellerstein's theoretical model to a modified estimation equation that incorporates these effects and uses it to create new estimates based on data on antimicrobial prescriptions from the 1994 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). Unexpectedly, the results appear to affirm both hypotheses. The evidence for moral hazard is particularly strong, as self-paying patients are significantly more likely than patients with Medicare or private insurance to be prescribed the generics that are cheapest relative to their brand-name counterparts. The author also finds that certain popular antimicrobial drugs such as amoxicillin and sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim are prescribed in the same form (generic or brand-name) by most doctors to most patients. The market power exhibited by these preferred forms leads the author to conclude that they are "brands" in the economic sense. / Master of Arts