In this document, we study the nonnegative least squares primal-dual method for solving linear programming problems. In particular, we investigate connections between this primal-dual method and the classical Hungarian method for the assignment problem. Firstly, we devise a fast procedure for computing the unrestricted least squares solution of a bipartite matching problem by exploiting the special structure of the incidence matrix of a bipartite graph. Moreover, we explain how to extract a solution for the cardinality matching problem from the nonnegative least squares solution. We also give an efficient procedure for solving the cardinality matching problem on general graphs using the nonnegative least squares approach. Next we look into some theoretical results concerning the minimization of p-norms, and separable differentiable convex functions, subject to linear constraints described by node-arc incidence matrices for graphs. Our main result is the reduction of the assignment problem to a single nonnegative least squares problem. This means that the primal-dual approach can be made to converge in one step for the assignment problem. This method does not reduce the primal-dual approach to one step for general linear programming problems, but it appears to give a good starting dual feasible point for the general problem.

There is much research conducted on training teachers to use the evidence-based teaching strategies known as system of least prompts. However, there is little research conducted on using a modified system of least prompt. This study examined the fidelity of implementation by two early childhood teachers using a modified system of least prompts with preschool aged children. A multiple-probe design across participants was used to determine the effect of fidelity of implementation of a modified system of least prompts strategy on the level of on-task student engagement. The results showed that early childhood teachers could implement the modified teaching strategy with fidelity while also increasing the level of on-task engagement.

System stability plays an important role in electric power systems. With the development of electric power system, the scale of the electric grid is now becoming larger and larger, and many renewable energy resources are integrated in the grid. However, at the same time, the stability and safety issues of electric power system are becoming more complicated. Frequency and phasors are two critical parameters of the system stability. Obtaining these two parameters have been great challenges for decades. Researchers have provided various kinds of algorithms for frequency tracking and phasor estimation. Among them, Least Squares (LS) algorithm is one of the most commonly used algorithm. This thesis studies the LS algorithm and the Total Least Squares (TLS) algorithm working on frequency tracking and phasor estimation. In order to test the performance of the two algorithms, some simulations have been made in the Matlab. The Total Vector Error (TVE) is a commonly used performance criteria, and the TVE results of the two algorithms are compared. The TLS algorithm performs better than LS algorithm when the frequencies of all harmonic components are given.

The healthcare labor market has experienced some significant changes in the last half century, including the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the emergence of managed care in the 1980s, and the worldwide mobility of labor encouraged by globalization. Currently, more than 25% of physicians working in the U.S. are foreign-born. The existing body of literature related to the impact of immigration on local wages has to date found conflicting results. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the impact of immigration of foreign physicians on local physician wages. This study employs physician survey data from the AMA Physician Masterfile for the years 1997 through 2007 combined with wage data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and data from other government sources. Several econometric models are employed to analyze the wage impacts of immigration, including ordinary least squares, fixed effects, two-stage least squares and a first-difference approach to control for endogenous location choice. The results of this study provide evidence that in the short-run, the impacts of immigration of physicians on area wages is small but positive. In the long run, however, wages adjust and the impact becomes negative and statistically significant, although the magnitude of the impact of a one percentage point increase in the share of immigrant physicians in an area is less than 0.2%. The negative wage effects of immigration tend to be larger for foreign-born physicians educated in the U.S. compared with foreign-born international medical graduates. The study also finds evidence that the negative effects of immigration tend to be offset by outflows of the lowest paid native physicians. Furthermore, physicians tend to locate in areas where wages are already higher, and foreign-born physicians are more likely than their native counterparts to work in larger cities as opposed to rural areas. The research has important policy implications in the presence of current debate over immigration law and healthcare reform and in an era of increasing mobility of labor due to globalization.

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<p>The Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region is faced with limited medical personnel and healthcare services to address the many healthcare problems of the region. Poor health indicators reflect the overall decline in socio-economic development. Shortages of access to health services in the region is further complicated by the concentration of health services in urban areas, the region’s multiple medical problems (over 70% of HIV/AIDS cases in the world); and the brain drain phenomenon – it is estimated one-third of African physicians emigrate to North America and Europe. The result is that the SSA region is left with about 10 physicians, and 20 beds, per 100,000 patients. Telemedicine has been found to offer socio-economic benefits, reduce costs, and improve access to healthcare service providers by patients, but previous attempts to move various information technologies from developers in the industrial world to the developing world have failed because of a clear neglect of infrastructural and cultural factors that influence such transfers. The objective of this study is to address key factors that challenge the introduction of telemedicine technology into the health sector in SSA in particular, and by extension, other developing countries with similar socio-economic structures.</p><p>This research offers a distinctive perspective, focusing on visually-based clinical applications in the SSA region, and considerable attention to the national infrastructure and cultural impact of telemedicine transfer (social and value) outcomes. Two research models and its associated hypotheses are proposed and empirically tested using quantitative data collected from SSA physicians and other health professionals. The study also contributes to the ongoing debate on the potential of telemedicine in improving access and reducing costs. This research can help to understand the socio-economic impact of telemedicine outcomes in a comprehensive way. The finding from the survey shows the rapid advances in telemedicine technology specifically, visual clinical applications may become an essential healthcare tool in the near future within SSA countries.</p>

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L'huile d'olive est un élément important de l'alimentation méditerranéenne. Cependant lorsqu'une huile vieillit, elle se dégrade et perd ses propriétés. Il est donc important de connaitre l'évolution de la composition de l'huile en fonction de ses conditions de stockage et de fabrication. Ce suivi a été effectué sur deux huiles de fabrication différente, une huile fruité vert et une huile fruité noir, obtenue à partir d'olive à maturité que l'on a laissé fermenter quelques jours. De manière à obtenir rapidement des vieillissements poussés, ces deux huiles ont été vieillies artificiellement, par procédé thermique , et par procédé photochimique. Ces vieillissements ont été réalisés sur des volumes différents de manière à déterminer l'impact du rapport surface/masse. En parallèle, des échantillons de chacune des deux huiles ont été conservés durant 24 mois dans des conditions de stockage différentes déterminées à l'aide d'un plan d'expériences. Les paramètres influençant le plus la conservation de l'huile d'olive sont l'apport en oxygène, la luminosité et la température. Ces influences ont été déterminées à partir du suivi des principaux paramètres de qualité La réponse des plans a permis de mettre en évidence des interactions entre ces différents paramètres. L'analyse de la composition de l'huile ainsi que de tous les critères de qualité demande beaucoup de temps et consomme une grande quantité de solvant. Afin de pallier à ces désagréments, les résultats ont également été utilisés pour construire des modèles chimiométriques permettant de déterminer ces grandeurs à partir des spectres proche et moyen infrarouge des échantillons. / Olive oil is an important component of the Mediterranean diet. When oil ages, it deteriorates and loses its properties. It is therefore important to know the evolution of the oil composition according to the conditions of storage and manufacturing. This monitoring was carried out on two different oils manufacturing, green fruity oil obtained from olives harvested before maturity, and black fruit oil obtained from olives harvest at maturity and fermented for few days under controlled conditions. To obtain quickly pushed aging, these two oils were artificially aged by heat process (heated to 180 °C under supply of O2), and photochemical process (under an UV lamp and under supply of O2). These aging were performed on different volumes to determine the impact of surface/weight ratio. In parallel, samples of both oils were stored for 24 months under different storage conditions determined using an experimental design. The parameters affecting the most the conservation of olive oil are oxygen, light and temperature. These influences were determined from the monitoring of key quality criteria. Response of experimental design helped to highlight the interactions between these different parameters. The analysis of the oil composition as well as all the quality criteria requires a large amount of solvents and a lot of time consumer. To overcome these inconveniences, chemometric models has been built to determine these criteria from the near and mid-infrared spectra of samples. Natural aging is very little advanced in comparison to accelerated aging, so predictive models were established from the results of natural aging and accelerated separately.

O presente trabalho propõe um procedimento de valoração de marca a partir de uma modelagem por equações estruturais. Este estudo aponta inicialmente um modelo conceitual de valoração de marca baseado na linha comportamental, ou seja, nas percepções dos consumidores e não no valor monetário da marca. Para aplicação do procedimento proposto, foram escolhidas as marcas das operadoras de telefonia celular Vivo e Claro. A partir da modelagem por equações estruturais, ajustou-se o modelo teórico proposto a cada uma das marcas em questão. Com o modelo ajustado foi possível calcular não apenas o valor de marca para cada um dos consumidores, como todas as variáveis que o compõe. A possibilidade de se calcular o valor de marca para cada consumidor é extremamente inovadora, uma vez que nenhum dos modelos revistos na literatura científica aponta esta funcionalidade. Com a base de dados contendo o valor de marca para cada consumidor entrevistado, foi possível efetuar diversas análises estatísticas, que permitiram compreender de forma profunda quais variáveis mais impactam o valor das marcas, ou ainda quais são seus pontos fortes e fracos. Com isto, foi possível desenhar estratégias de marketing específicas para que cada uma das marcas aumente o seu valor. / The present study brings a procedure that measures brand equity using a structural equation modeling. This thesis proposes a conceptual model that measures brand equity based in a behaviorist approach, i.e., based on the consumers perception instead of monetary brand value. To apply this procedure two cellular phone operator brands were chosen: Vivo and Claro, and then, using structural equation modeling, it was possible to adjust the initial theory model to each brand. From the adjusted model it was possible to measure not only brand equity to each consumer, but all variables that are part of it. The possibility to measure brand equity to each consumer is extremely new, once no other models - reviewed in the scientific literature - pointed this feature. Using the database and the brand value to each interviewed consumer it was possible to make statistic analysis that allowed comprehending deeply which variables impact brand equity, or what are their strong and weak points. Then it was possible to make specific marketing strategies to each brand to increase their equity.

<p><strong>Syfte:</strong> Syftet är att försöka urskilja samband mellan hushålls socioekonomiska faktorer och efterfrågan på specifika bostadsattribut. Vår frågeställning är: Finns det samband mellan vilka specifika attribut som efterfrågas hos bostadsrätter och hushålls socioekonomiska faktorer? Vår förhoppning är att åtminstone få en indikation på vad olika typer av hushåll efterfrågar.<strong>Metod: </strong>Denna studie baseras på en databas bestående av bostadsrättsförsäljningar som skett i Gävle under år 2008 samt socioekonomisk information om de hushåll som förvärvat dessa bostadsrätter. För att estimera hushålls efterfrågan på ett specifikt bostadsrättsattribut har en tvåstegsmetod använts. I ett första steg avslöjas de underförstådda marginalpriserna av bostadsrätters egenskaper med hjälp av den hedoniska metoden. Dessa marginalpriser används i ett andra steg där efterfrågeekvationer för enskilda bostadsrättsattribut estimeras. Beräkningarna utförs i statistikprogrammet EViews.<strong>Resultat & slutsats: </strong>Resultatet visar att vissa bostadsrättsattribut kan sammankopplas med hushålls socioekonomiska faktorer. Vidare visar resultatet tydliga men mycket svaga mönster vad gäller efterfrågan på marknaden, trots att prisstrukturen på samma marknad är oerhört utmärkande. Vi kan konstatera att prissättningen på bostadsrätters attribut är väldigt tydlig medan konsumtionen av samma attribut är otydlig.<strong>Förslag till fortsatt forskning:</strong> Intressant vore att jämföra studier av denna typ med hyresmarknadens hyressättningsmodell och se om den utgår från samma värdering av bostadens attribut som det visat sig att hushåll efterfrågar. Ytterligare ett förslag är att skatta en faktisk boendekostnad för samtliga hushåll i datamaterialet och använda disponibel inkomst istället för taxerad förvärvsinkomst i efterfrågefunktionen.<strong>Uppsatsens bidrag: </strong>Studien har visat hur man kan estimera och finna samband mellan bostadsattribut och hushålls socioekonomiska faktorer. Därutöver har problemet med endogenitet behandlats genom instrumentvariabler och en uppdelning av datamaterialet i fyra delområden.</p> / <p><strong>Aim:</strong> The purpose of this study is to try to distinguish a relationship between household socio-economic factors and the demand for specific housing attributes. Our question is: Is there a connection between the specific attributes requested by households and its socio-economic factors? Our hope is to at least get an indication of what different types of households demand.<strong>Method:</strong> This study is based on information of tenant-owner flats sales made in Gävle in 2008 as well as socio-economic information of those households who bought these flats. In order to estimate demand for a specific housing attribute a two-step method is used. In a first step the implicit marginal prices of housing attributes are revealed by the hedonic method. These marginal rates are used in a second step to reveal the specific household demand for individual housing attributes. The calculations are made in the statistical program EViews.<strong>Result & Conclusions: </strong>The result shows that some housing attributes can be linked with household socio-economic factors. The result shows a clear but very weak pattern of demand in the market, despite that the price structure in the same market is extremely remarkable. We note that the prices of housing attributes are very clear while the consumption of the same attributes is unclear.<strong>Suggestions for future research: </strong>It would be interesting to compare the results of this type of study with rental markets rent-model and see if it is based on the same valuation of the dwelling attributes that household’s demand. Another proposal is to estimate the actual housing costs for all of the households in the data and use disposable income rather than actual income in the demand function.<strong>Contribution of the thesis: </strong>The study has revealed how to estimate and identify household demand for specific housing attributes. In addition, the problem of endogeneity has been treated with instrument variables and a separation of the data set into four submarkets.</p>