Electricity network pricing approaches play a fundamental role in establishing whether providing the network service function is economically beneficial to both the network operators and other stakeholders, namely, network users. Many pricing methodologies have been developed since the late 80‟s. The earlier approaches were not based on economic principle while the latest are directed to being more based on economic principle as the shift is towards deregulated and privatized electric power industry as opposed to the earlier vertically regulated regime. As a result, many such methodologies based on economic principle have emerged and these reflect the investment cost incurred in circuits and transformers to support real and reactive power flow. However, to reflect investment cost incurred for maintaining network voltages in network charges has received very little attention in network charges. Therefore, this research work is aimed to create a charging approach to recover investment cost, by the network operator, for maintaining the network voltages. This thesis presents a new long-run incremental cost (LRIC) pricing approach for distribution networks and demonstrates the course of action of evaluating and allocating the network asset cost in the context of maintaining network voltages. Also, it should be noted that this approach can be used for transmission networks. Firstly, the LRIC-voltage network pricing approach for reflecting the future network VAr compensation assets is proposed. Then, this approach is extended to consider n-1 contingency situation as per statutory requirement that the network should be able to withstand such contingencies in order to enhance reasonable security and reliability in its network. Lastly, this LRIC-voltage network charging methodology is again extended to reflect the charges for existing network VAr compensation assets. In addition, this LRIC-voltage network pricing approach is improved to reflect better the nodal charges as the respective nodal voltage degradation rates, given corresponding load growth rate, are determined based on the P-V curve concept. The advantages of all these incorporate the ability to reflect correct forward-looking charges, to recognize both real and reactive powers, to provide locational charges and to provide charges for both generation and demand customers. In addition, two fundamental studies were conducted to demonstrate the trend in which the LRIC-voltage network charges would follow given different networks and different load growth rates. What set apart the LRIC-voltage network charges are those two parameters. Moreover, with regard to different networks, this was a defining moment as to how the aforementioned charges should be sought given transmission and distribution networks. A pricing software package utilizing load-flow has been developed implementing the proposed LRIC-voltage network pricing methodology and, its extensions. This software can well be utilized by transmission and distribution companies for analyzing their cost. The LRIC-voltage network pricing methodology and its extensions, are all demonstrated on the IEEE 14-bus test system and a practical distribution test network in the South Wales area of England, UK.

The thesis shows the view of the process of recruitment and selection of the employees applied in companies. The process is decomposed into the specific activities that are analysed in more detail. Recruitment methods are evaluated from the perspective of both employers and applicants for posts. On the basis of the questionnaires lists the specific procedures used in practice by employers, applicants' approaches and experiences of the recruitment procedure.

Patients undergoing chemotherapy treatments for cancer often experience adverse side effects, including cognitive deficits. These deficits impact the patient's ability to communicate effectively with their oncology provider. Ineffective communication can adversely affect patient outcomes and decrease patient-provider satisfaction. The resulting poor communication can contribute to poor patient outcomes. This systematic literature review focused on assistive communication tools that could be used in an outpatient oncology setting to improve patient-provider communication. The literature review findings led to the development of a resource for providers that includes 15 communication tools that can be used to assess and improve communication in cancer care. Initially 4, 533 articles were identified using the search terms; cancer patient/providers, communication tools, chemo brain, and improving/ineffective communications. Articles were selected for inclusion that included communication tools, which assisted oncology providers in improving cancer care. Articles were excluded if they were not specific to cancer patients and did not contain communication tools. Analysis of the systematic review of the literature utilized Bandolier's hierarchy levels of evidence. The Health Promotion Model serves as the theoretical framework to guide the project. Oncology providers that utilized communication tools with patients found an 116% improvement in documentation of symptoms, adverse effects, and corresponding medical management compared to providers who did not use communication tools. Implementation of communication tools in outpatient oncology settings can result in a positive social change in the patient-provider relationship during cancer treatment.

Many historical documents are rich in genealogical facts. Extracting these facts by hand is tedious and almost impossible considering the hundreds of thousands of genealogically rich family-history books currently scanned and online. As one approach for helping to make the extraction feasible, we propose GreenFIE—a "Green" Form-based Information-Extraction tool which is "green" in the sense that it improves with use toward the goal of minimizing the cost of human labor while maintaining high extraction accuracy. Given a page in a historical document, the user's task is to fill out given forms with all facts on a page in a document called for by the forms (e.g. to collect the birth and death information, marriage information, and parent-child relationships for each person on the page). GreenFIE has a repository of extraction patterns that it applies to fill in forms. A user checks the correctness of GreenFIE's form filling, adds any missed facts, and fixes any mistakes. GreenFIE learns based on user feedback, adding new extraction rules to its repository. Ideally, GreenFIE improves as it proceeds so that it does most of the work, leaving little for the user to do other than confirm that its extraction is correct. We evaluate how well GreenFIE performs on family history books in terms of "greenness"—how much human labor diminishes during form filling, while simultaneously maintaining high accuracy.

Dynamic memory allocators are a determining factor of an application's performanceand have the opportunity to improve a major performance bottleneck ontoday's computer hardware: data locality. To approach this problem, a memoryallocator must rst oer strategies that allow the locality problem to be addressed.However, while focusing on locality, an allocator must also not ignore the existing constraintsof allocation speed and fragmentation, which further complicate its design. Inorder for a locality improving technique to be successfully employed in today's largecode applications, its integration needs to be automatic, without user intervention.The alternative, manual integration, is not a tractable solution.In this dissertation we develop three novel memory allocators that explore dierentallocation strategies that enhance an application's locality. We conduct the rststudy that shows that allocation speed, fragmentation and locality improving goalsare antagonistic. We develop an automatic method that supplies allocation hintsfrom C++ STL containers to their allocators. This method allows applications tobenet from locality improving techniques at the cost of a simple re-compilation. Weconduct the rst study that quanties the eect of allocation hints on performance,and show that an allocator with high locality of reference can be as competitive asone using an application's spatial feedback.To further allow dynamic memory allocation to improve an application's performance,new and non-traditional strategies need be explored. We develop a generic software tool that allows users to examine unconventional strategies. The tool allowsusers not only to focus on allocation strategies rather than their implementation, butalso to compare and contrast various approaches.

Dynamic memory allocators are a determining factor of an application's performanceand have the opportunity to improve a major performance bottleneck ontoday's computer hardware: data locality. To approach this problem, a memoryallocator must rst oer strategies that allow the locality problem to be addressed.However, while focusing on locality, an allocator must also not ignore the existing constraintsof allocation speed and fragmentation, which further complicate its design. Inorder for a locality improving technique to be successfully employed in today's largecode applications, its integration needs to be automatic, without user intervention.The alternative, manual integration, is not a tractable solution.In this dissertation we develop three novel memory allocators that explore dierentallocation strategies that enhance an application's locality. We conduct the rststudy that shows that allocation speed, fragmentation and locality improving goalsare antagonistic. We develop an automatic method that supplies allocation hintsfrom C++ STL containers to their allocators. This method allows applications tobenet from locality improving techniques at the cost of a simple re-compilation. Weconduct the rst study that quanties the eect of allocation hints on performance,and show that an allocator with high locality of reference can be as competitive asone using an application's spatial feedback.To further allow dynamic memory allocation to improve an application's performance,new and non-traditional strategies need be explored. We develop a generic software tool that allows users to examine unconventional strategies. The tool allowsusers not only to focus on allocation strategies rather than their implementation, butalso to compare and contrast various approaches.

Edge detection is an important step in computer vision since edges are utilized by the successor visual processing stages including many tasks such as motion estimation, stereopsis, shape representation and matching, etc. In this study, we test whether a local consistency measure based on image orientation (which we call Intersection Consistency - IC), which was previously shown to improve detection of junctions, can be used for improving the quality of edge detection of seven different detectors / namely, Canny, Roberts, Prewitt, Sobel, Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG), Intrinsic Dimensionality, Line Segment Detector (LSD). IC works well on images that contain prominent objects which are different in color from their surroundings. IC give good results on natural images that have especially cluttered background. On images involving human made objects, IC leads to good results as well. But, depending on the amount of clutter, the loss of true positives might be more crucial. Through our comprehensive investigation, we show that approximately 21% increase in f-score is obtained whereas some important edges are lost. We conclude from our experiments that IC is suitable for improving the quality of edge detection in some detectors such as Canny, LoG and LSD.

As in-suite heat recovery ventilator (HRV) use increases, cases of cross-contamination and odour transmission in MURBs are beginning to appear. To mitigate these issues and maximize HRV benefits, a better design and construction methodology specific to MURBs is required. Previously conducted condition surveys suggest the possibility of the fresh air supply becoming contaminated by the exhaust air stream from adjacent units. It is suggested that the intake and exhaust configuration has a significant influence on the potential for cross contamination. The results show cross contamination is an issue in high-rise condominiums. With a low exhaust vent angle and the right wind direction and speed, contaminants can travel from an exhaust source to a fresh air supply in a significant quantity. The potential impact here is to protect the health and safety of all home owners living in high-rise condominiums that utilize in-suite ventilation systems.

As in-suite heat recovery ventilator (HRV) use increases, cases of cross-contamination and odour transmission in MURBs are beginning to appear. To mitigate these issues and maximize HRV benefits, a better design and construction methodology specific to MURBs is required. Previously conducted condition surveys suggest the possibility of the fresh air supply becoming contaminated by the exhaust air stream from adjacent units. It is suggested that the intake and exhaust configuration has a significant influence on the potential for cross contamination. The results show cross contamination is an issue in high-rise condominiums. With a low exhaust vent angle and the right wind direction and speed, contaminants can travel from an exhaust source to a fresh air supply in a significant quantity. The potential impact here is to protect the health and safety of all home owners living in high-rise condominiums that utilize in-suite ventilation systems.

Išanalizuoti valdymo objektus, atskleisti VŠĮ "Veržlusis Nevežis" valdymo veiksnius darančius įtaka rezultatams, apibendrinti krepšinio klubo valdymą. / Sports club, management, improving.