Pendant la dernière décennie, le format de données XML est devenu l'un des principaux moyens de représentation et d'échange de données sur le Web. La détection de l'indépendance entre une requête et une mise à jour, qui a lieu en absence d'impact d'une mise à jour sur une requête, est un problème crucial pour la gestion efficace de tâches comme la maintenance des vues, le contrôle de concurrence et de sécurité. Cette thèse présente une nouvelle technique d'analyse statique pour détecter l'indépendance entre requête et mise à jour XML, dans le cas où les données sont typées par un schéma. La contribution de la thèse repose sur une notion de type plus riche que celle employée jusqu'ici dans la littérature. Au lieu de caractériser les éléments d'un document XML utiles ou touchés par une requête ou mise à jour en utilisant un ensemble d'étiquettes, ceux-ci sont caractérisés par un ensemble de chaînes d'étiquettes, correspondants aux chemins parcourus pendant l'évaluation de l'expression dans un document valide pour le schéma. L'analyse d'indépendance résulte du développement d'un système d'inférence de type pour les chaînes. Cette analyse précise soulève une question importante et difficile liés aux schémas récursifs: un ensemble infini de chaînes pouvant être inférées dans ce cas, est-il possible et comment se ramener à une analyse effective donc finie. Cette thèse présente donc une technique d'approximation correcte et complète assurant une analyse finie. L'analyse de cette technique a conduit à développer des algorithmes pour une implantation efficace de l'analyse, et de mener une large série de tests validant à la fois la qualité de l'approche et son efficacité.

This research focuses on the study of Taiwan college level students¡¦ attitude toward national identity, including their ideology and overall thought process. This study also provides a complete spectrum regarding to students¡¦ background, and ethnic group. This study hopes to provide significant suggestions for further research, planning over this subject in the future. This study applied stratified sampling method to collect survey data from 1128 (valid samples) college level students around Kaohsiung area. This investigation is based on the measurement of ¡§College Level Students¡¦ National Identity Survey Form¡¨ and the collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson product-moment correlation. The major findings were described as follows: 1. Kaohsiung area college level students clearly show the identification with national (R.O.C.) symbol, Chinese culture and the Taiwan institution, however, there is no clear indication to show their preference of national image, and their standings that Taiwan should be unified with China or be an independent state. In summary, the collected data could not tell the inclination to Taiwan or China. 2. In Kaohsiung area, students with different background factors clearly show variant inclination in national identity; those factors can be identified as: ¡§political party preference¡¨, ¡§ethnic group influence¡¨. 3. Based on the results of ¡§National Identity Multi-Spectrum Survey Form¡¨, the students¡¦ ideology is strongly correlated with their ethnic culture identification, however, the correlation between the students¡¦ ideology and the symbol of the state, national image, inclination to unification or independence is moderate; finally, the correlation between students¡¦ thinking disposition and institutional identity shows weak link. 4. For Kaohsiung area college level students, ethnic culture identification is an important factor for their attitude toward national identification; this phenomenon also implies a strong divergence between ethnic culture identification. However, it seems institutional identification is a fair factor for students¡¦ attitude toward national identification. This also indicates students do not have significant dispute over this subject.

Syfte:  Syftet med studien är att belysa och analysera hur revisorn arbetar för att eliminera risken för att göra väsentliga fel i årsredovisningen. Studien ska även beskriva och skapa förståelse för Revisorsnämndens och små revisionsbyråers arbete och ställningstagande till kvalitetssäkring. Metod: Utifrån ett hermeneutiskt synsätt och med en kvalitativ metod utfördes personliga intervjuer med tre små revisionsbyråer och Revisorsnämnden. Vid val av informanter tillämpades ett strategiskt urval. I studien har en abduktiv ansats använts.  Slutsatser: Åtaganden för att god kvalitet ska uppnås i revisionen är revisionsprocessen, rotation på revisionsuppdrag vart sjunde år, tillämpning av analysmodell och etiska normer, FAR SRS:s kvalitetskontroller, internt kontrollsystem och kvalitetssäkring från RN. / Revisionskvalitet, kvalitetssäkring, etik, moral, trovärdighet, självständighet, oberoende, objektivitet, opartiskhet

Purpose: the purpose of the thesis is to find out how Lithuanian commercial banks position their internal audit function within their organizational structure to overcome the tension of working with the management and keeping the distance to be able to report on them at the same time; and is internal audit function considered as one of the cornerstones of corporate governance. Moreover, comparison of banks is made to inspect any patterns, differences and similarities concerning the origin of the capital. Method: to answer the research question a qualitative approach was chosen: analysis of audited financial reports in the period of 2008-2011, organizational statutes and all available public information in 7 Lithuanian commercial banks is performed. Moreover email-interviews were held with all chief internal auditors. Findings: the internal audit function in Lithuanian commercial banks is not considered as one of the cornerstones of corporate governance – the function only participates in the corporate governance through the audit committee. Threats for independence are mitigated by giving the responsibility to the audit committee to appoint and dismiss the chief internal auditor and to approve the annual audit plan; and by composing the audit committee with at least one financial expert. Moreover, there is no clear pattern or distinction between internal audit positioning in foreign-capital and Lithuanian- capital banks. Concluding remarks: the need for improved controls is a very important issue in the public debate. The position that internal auditors are put in nowadays is very challenging – internal auditors are expected to provide both assurance and consulting services and maintain their independence at the same time – and organizations handle it differently.

In the last decade XML became one of the main standards for data storage and exchange on the Web. Detecting XML query-update independence is crucial to efficiently perform data management tasks, like those concerning view-maintenance, concurrency control, and security. This thesis presents a novel static analysis technique to detect XML query-update independence, in the presence of a schema. Rather than types, the presented system infers chains of types. Each chain represents a path that can be traversed on a valid document during query/update evaluation. The resulting independence analysis is precise, although it raises a challenging issue: recursive schemas may lead to infer infinitely many chains. This thesis presents a sound and complete approximation technique ensuring a finite analysis in any case, together with an efficient implementation performing the chain-based analysis in polynomial space and time.

Standard local search algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems repeatedly apply small changes to a current solution to improve the problem's given objective function. In contrast, non-oblivious local search algorithms are guided by an auxiliary potential function, which is distinct from the problem's objective. In this thesis, we compare the standard and non-oblivious approaches for a variety of problems, and derive new, improved non-oblivious local search algorithms for several problems in the area of constrained linear and monotone submodular maximization. First, we give a new, randomized approximation algorithm for maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a matroid constraint. Our algorithm's approximation ratio matches both the known hardness of approximation bounds for the problem and the performance of the recent ``continuous greedy'' algorithm. Unlike the continuous greedy algorithm, our algorithm is straightforward and combinatorial. In the case that the monotone submodular function is a coverage function, we can obtain a further simplified, deterministic algorithm with improved running time. Moving beyond the case of single matroid constraints, we then consider general classes of set systems that capture problems that can be approximated well. While previous such classes have focused primarily on greedy algorithms, we give a new class that captures problems amenable to optimization by local search algorithms. We show that several combinatorial optimization problems can be placed in this class, and give a non-oblivious local search algorithm that delivers improved approximations for a variety of specific problems. In contrast, we show that standard local search algorithms give no improvement over known approximation results for these problems, even when allowed to search larger neighborhoods than their non-oblivious counterparts. Finally, we expand on these results by considering standard local search algorithms for constraint satisfaction problems. We develop conditions under which the approximation ratio of standard local search remains limited even for super-polynomial or exponential local neighborhoods. In the special case of MaxCut, we further show that a variety of techniques including random or greedy initialization, large neighborhoods, and best-improvement pivot rules cannot improve the approximation performance of standard local search.

Conventional wisdom holds that constitutions shape behavior, structures, and institutions. Looking at provisions in the constitutions of 19 Latin American countries, I show the level of judicial independence exercised by a country’s courts and judges is a function of constitutional provisions.

No description available.

DNA microarrays are capable of measuring expression levels of thousands of genes, even the whole genome, in a single experiment. Based on this, they have been widely used to extend the studies of cancerous tissues to a genomic level. One of the main goals in DNA microarray experiments is to identify a set of relevant genes such that the desired outputs of the experiment mostly depend on this set, to the exclusion of the rest of the genes. This is motivated by the fact that the biological process in cell typically involves only a subset of genes, and not the whole genome. The task of selecting a subset of relevant genes is called feature (gene) selection. Herein, we propose a feature selection algorithm for gene expression data. It is based on the Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion, and partly motivated by Rank-One Downdate (R1D) and the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The algorithm is computationally very fast and scalable to large data sets, and can be applied to response variables of arbitrary type (categorical and continuous). Experimental results of the proposed technique are presented on some synthetic and well-known microarray data sets. Later, we discuss the capability of HSIC in providing a general framework which encapsulates many widely used techniques for dimensionality reduction, clustering and metric learning. We will use this framework to explain two metric learning algorithms, namely the Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) and closed form metric learning (CFML). As a result of this framework, we are able to propose a new metric learning method. The proposed technique uses the concepts from normalized cut spectral clustering and is associated with an underlying convex optimization problem.

Background In 2008 a global financial crisis erupted. Even though auditors were not to blame for the financial crisis the public questioned how auditors could issue a clean bill of health despite the serious weaknesses. This made the Commission release the 2010 Green Paper on audit policy: Lessons from the Crisis. The Green Paper is a consultation paper which received around 700 replies from various stakeholders. In 2011, the Commission presented their proposal on reform of the audit market, in which many of the key elements had been discussed in the Green Paper. The 2011 proposal seeks to enhance auditor independence and introduce a more dynamic audit market. The proposed reforms are very strict and if the proposal is passed in its current form it would imply a major change of the audit market. This thesis has studied the replies made by investors to the Green Paper; investors are the primary stakeholders and those who should be most concerned with auditor independence. It is therefore important and interesting to study their viewpoints to the Green Paper. Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand and explain investors’ standpoints on the proposals mentioned in the Green Paper to enhance auditor independence, and to examine whether the European Commission, as indicted by the 2011 proposal, require more independence than investors as indicted by the replies made to the Green Paper. Method This study has taken a qualitative approach where the data has been analyzed in-depth. The Green Paper consists of 38 questions; four of these have been studied as they strongly relate to auditor independence. Furthermore this thesis has studied the replies made by investors; investors are the primary stakeholders and those who should be most concerned with auditor independence. It is therefore important and interesting to study their viewpoints to the Green Paper. Conclusion The majority of the respondents’ are negative to the ideas presented in the Green Paper but that does not imply that the Commission requires more independence than investors. Both the Commission and investors argue that status quo is not an option and that auditor independence must be strengthened. What separates their views is how to strengthen auditor independence. The Commission seeks to impose strict regulations while investors prefer good corporate governance as an alternative approach to strengthen auditor independence.