Thesis (PhD (Logistics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH SUMMARY: In an effort to compete globally, South African supply chains must achieve and maintain a competitive advantage. One way of achieving this is by ensuring that South African supply chains are as efficient as possible. Consequently, steps must be taken to evaluate the efficiency levels of South African supply chains. This dissertation develops the composite supply chain efficiency model using variables specifically identified as problem areas experienced by South African supply chains. The composite supply chain efficiency model evaluates the overall efficiency of a supply chain based on three criteria, namely, reliability efficiency, cost efficiency and speed efficiency. It identifies bottlenecks along the supply chain and in so doing identifies key focus areas for firms if they want to improve their overall efficiency and become more competitive. 3 / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In ’n poging om wˆereldwyd te kompeteer, moet Suid-Afrikaanse voorsieningskettings ’n mededingende voordeel behaal en handhaaf. Een manier om dit te bereik is om te verseker dat Suid-Afrikaanse voorsieningskettings so doeltreffend as moontlik funksioneer. Gevolglik moet stappe gedoen word om die doeltreffendheidsvlakke van die Suid-Afrikaanse voorsieningskettings te evalueer. Hierdie proefskrif het die saamgestelde voorsieningsketting doeltreffendheidsmodel ontwikkel wat veranderlikes gebruik wat spesifiek ge¨ıdentifiseer is as probleemgebiede in Suid-Afrikaanse voorsieningskettings. Die saamgestelde voorsieningsketting doeltreffendheidsmodel evalueer die algehele doeltreffendheid van ’n voorsieningsketting gebaseer op drie kriteria, naamlik, betroubaarheidsdoeltreffendheid, koste-doeltreffendheid en spoed-doeltreffendheid. Dit identifiseer knelpunte in die voorsieningsketting en identifiseer belangrike fokusareas vir ondernemings wat aangespreek moet word as hul algehele doeltreffendheid wil verbeter en meer mededingend raak. / jfl2010

We introduce decompositions determined by Galois field and degree of the space of algebraic numbers modulo torsion and the space of algebraic points on an elliptic curve over a number field. These decompositions are orthogonal with respect to the natural inner product associated to the L² Weil height recently introduced by Allcock and Vaaler in the case of algebraic numbers and the inner product naturally associated to the Néron-Tate canonical height on an elliptic curve. Using these decompositions, we then introduce vector space norms associated to the Mahler measure. For algebraic numbers, we formulate L[superscript p] Lehmer conjectures involving lower bounds on these norms and prove that these new conjectures are equivalent to their classical counterparts, specifically, the classical Lehmer conjecture in the p=1 case and the Schinzel-Zassenhaus conjecture in the p=[infinity] case. / text

Konstitucinio Teismo pagrindinė pareiga yra ištirti ir priimti sprendimą, ar galiojantis teisės aktas, neprieštarauja Konstitucijai ir tuo pačiu kitiems teisės aktams. Konstitucinio Teismo sprendimas yra galutinis. Vienintelis atvejis, kai sprendimas galėtų būti pakeistas, tai pakeitus atitinkamus Konstitucijos straipsnius, kurie prieštarauja ginčijamam teisiniam aktui, tačiau valstybių praktika rodo, kad mieliau yra keičiami konstitucinei tvarkai prieštaraujantys teisės aktai, o ne pati Konstitucija. Tokią praktiką pagrindžia ir keitimo procedūros sudėtingumas vienu ir kitu atveju, taip pat pakeitus Konstitucijoje įtvirtintus principus, turėtų keistis ir nusistovėjęs valstybės gyvenimas. Konstitucinio Teismo sprendimai gali būti skirti tiek leidžiamajai valdžiai, tiek ir privatiems asmenims, priklausomai nuo to, kas į jį kreipėsi, bet pripažintą prieštaraujančiu teisės aktą gali pataisyti tik įstatymų leidžiamoji valdžia. Tačiau Konstituciniam Teismui nėra draudžiama ir pačiam imtis tam tikrų priemonių, kurių dėka sprendimai būtų įgyvendami taip, kad panaikinus teisės aktą, neliktų teisės spragų: įstatymuose ar Konstitucinio Teismo jurisprudencijoje teisę taikančioms institucijoms nurodoma teisinio reguliavimo spragas užpildyti tiesiogiai vadovaujantis Konstitucija; akto pašalinimo iš teisės sistemos atidėjimas; kiti teismai yra įpareigojami sustabdyti procesą bylose, kurios nagrinėjamos remiantis ginčijamu aktu, kol leidžiamoji valdžia priims pakeistą įstatymą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The main duty of the Constitutional Court is to examine and make a decision, if an effective law, is not contrary with the Constitution or other valid law. The decision of the Constitutional Court is mandatory. The only way to concur decision is to change the Constituion or some of its articles, which are contrary to the questionable law, but as the practice of the states show, states are more willing to change the questionable law not the Constitution. The arguments for changing the law not the Constitution is the complexity of the changing procedure and if you change the principles of the Constitution, you also have to change the ordinary every day life of the state. The Constituional Court decisions can be dedicated to legislative power, or only to private people, assuming who was the initiator of the case, but the unconstitutional law can be amended only by legislative bodies. But there are no prohibitions for Constitutional Court to take his own remedies in order to assure such implementation of the decision, that when the unconstitutional law is abolished, there won‘t occur any legislative gaps. Constitutional Courts of the Europe use such measures: in the law or constitutional jurisprudence for the bodies, which aplly law, are told to fill the gaps directly using the Constitution (this measure is used by Russian and Polish Constitutional Courts); the delay of the unconstitutional act removal from the law system (used by Austrian, Latvian, German Constitutional Courts)... [to full text]

Ingeniero Civil Mecánico / En Chile, los microempresarios son cada vez más. En el año 2004 el 81% de las empresas existentes correspondía a microempresarios. Es por esto que las oportunidades de crédito también están en aumento. Para que las instituciones puedan definir a quien asignar o no crédito, generalmente utilizan Credit Scoring. El problema que se presenta ante esta metodología, es que los modelos pierden poder discriminante en el tiempo, debido a cambios en la población y en la distribución de las variables que se evalúan. Esta memoria diseña un proceso de negocio, basado en test estadísticos, que permite determinar el momento óptimo para ajustar los modelos de riesgo de crédito a consumidores. La metodología que se sigue para obtenerlo, consiste en definir un test supervisado, test K-S, y un test no supervisado, Fieller Stability Measure, para estimar una medida de pérdida y el momento óptimo de la re-calibración. Con esto, se construye el proceso de negocio y se evalúa en datos de una institución financiera real. Los datos con los que se cuenta para realizar estas estimaciones consideran a carteras de microempresarios de sectores no rurales. El periodo de estudio va desde Enero del 2010 a Septiembre del 2012, y la muestra total incluye un total de 83.137 registros. Con estos datos se evalúa el comportamiento de la curva K-S versus la pérdida y se obtiene con un error del 22%, al medir el valor del aumento de la pérdida dada la baja porcentual del estadístico KS. Aplicando el método Fieller Stability Measure se verifica cuales meses las variables no cumplen con la condición de mantenerse dentro de los límites aceptables. Con esto se concluye que la alerta de acción (para re-calibrar el modelo) ocurre cuando durante tres meses seguidos el intervalo de la variable traspasa los límites del modelo. Así mismo se establece como alerta de precaución cuando el intervalo de la variable se sale de los límites por un mes. Se comprueba que para el caso de alerta de acción la pérdida que se recupera justifica el costo de re-calibración. Al contrario del caso de la alerta de precaución en donde no es rentable, e incluso aumenta la pérdida, al recalibrar el modelo.

The notion of uniform countable additivity or uniform absolute continuity is present implicitly in the Lebesgue Dominated Convergence Theorem and explicitly in the Vitali-Hahn-Saks and Nikodym Theorems, respectively. V. M. Dubrovsky studied the connection between uniform countable additivity and uniform absolute continuity in a series of papers, and Bartle, Dunford, and Schwartz established a close relationship between uniform countable additivity in ca(Σ) and operator theory for the classical continuous function spaces C(K). Numerous authors have worked extensively on extending and generalizing the theorems of the preceding authors. Specifically, we mention Bilyeu and Lewis as well as Brooks and Drewnowski, whose efforts molded the direction and focus of this paper. This paper is a study of the techniques used by Bell, Bilyeu, and Lewis in their paper on uniform exhaustivity and Banach lattices to present a Banach lattice version of two important and powerful results in measure theory by Brooks and Drewnowski. In showing that the notions of exhaustivity and continuity take on familiar forms in certain Banach lattices of measures they show that these important measure theory results follow as corollaries of the generalized Banach lattice versions. This work uses their template to generalize results established by Bator, Bilyeu, and Lewis.

SNA provides a wide range of tools that allow examination of telecommunications graphs. Those graphs contain vertices representing cell phone users and lines standing for established connections. Many sna tools do not incorporate the intensity of interaction. This may lead to wrong conclusions because the difference between best friends and random contacts can be defined by the accumulated duration of talks. To solve this problem, we propose a closeness centrality measure (ewc) that incorporates line values and compare it to Freeman's closeness. Small exemplary networks will demonstrate the characteristics of the weighted closeness compared to other centrality measures. Finally, the ewc will be tested on a real-world telecommunications graph provided by a large Austrian mobile service provider and the advantages of the ewc will be discussed. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

In Social Network Analysis (SNA) centrality measures focus on activity (degree), information access (betweenness), distance to all the nodes (closeness), or popularity (pagerank). We introduce a new measure quantifying the distance of nodes to the network center. It is called weighted distance to nearest center (WDNC) and it is based on edge-weighted closeness (EWC), a weighted version of closeness. It combines elements of weighted centrality as well as clustering. The WDNC will be tested on two e-mail networks of the R community, one of the most important open source programs for statistical computing and graphics. We will find that there is a relationship between the WDNC and the formal organization of the R community. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Abstract THE CARE FACTOR: THE IMPORTANCE OF USING DOMAIN IDENTIFICATION MEASURES TO IDENTIFY STEREOTYPE THREAT VULNERABILITY IN HIGH SCHOOL FEMALES. By Kimberly Y. Randolph, PhD A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2016. Major Director: Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, PhD. Professor Department of Educational Leadership There is a gap that persists in math achievement between high school males and females. Although the NAEP 2015 longitudinal report shows a narrowing in math achievement between males and females there still remains a gap. More importantly, females are less likely to enter into math - related college programs. Those that do enter into math related college programs sometimes choose to drop out of these programs. The purpose of this study was to do an analysis of factors, along with stereotype threat (the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype) that might affect math achievement in girls. The factors used were domain identification measure, motivational orientation, self-efficacy and cognitive interference. Girls who participated in the study attended private or public schools, are in the 9th through 12 grade and have taken algebra I and geometry. Thus, for the female students in this study, domain identification level did not predict math achievement, desire to learn did not predict math achievement, mastery of goals did not predict math achievement, competitive excellence did not predict math achievement, competition seeking predicted math achievement accounting for 25% of the variance in math scores, motivation anxiety worry did not predict math achievement, and motivation anxiety emotionality did not predict math achievement, threat condition did not affect self- efficacy, threat condition did not affect cognitive interference, threat is not related to desire to learn, threat has no effect on personal mastery, threat condition had no effect on competition seeking, threat condition had no effect on emotionality, threat condition did not have an effect on mathematics achievement. . Perhaps there have been changes in female student attitude toward mathematics. With the rise of (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) initiatives in schools across the country, females are encouraged to immerse themselves in domains that traditionally are dominated by males.

The aim of this thesis is the thorough description of the copula theory. It deals with the theory's basic definitions, classes and characteristics. In addition, relations between copulas and dependence measures are explained. Furthermore, we evaluate the possibilities of copula's parametres estimation and selecting the right copula for real data. Then, the copula theory is interconnected with the basic risk measures in finance. We describe the elementary categorization of financial risks and standard risk measurement approaches. We also define basic risk measures with the emphasis on value at risk. Lastly, we present a real data case study of a selected portfolio.

Gross Domestic Product has historically been the dominant, often sole, yardstick regarding a nation's economic development, growth, and well-being. This paper acknowledges GDP's shortcomings and aims development more rounded metrics to better measure well-being. The aim of this thesis is to advance the work done by 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress by reassessing the twelve recommendations made by Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi and attempting to apply them to a new dashboard of metrics. JEL Classification I31 E01 E21 Keywords well-being, economic performance, GDP, Stiglitz Commission, quality-of-life, social progress Abstrakt Hrubý domácí produkt je historicky dominantní metrika v souvislosti s národním hospodářským rozvojem, růstem a blahobytem. Tato práce potvrzuje nedostatky HDP a jejím cílem je vývoj více vyvážené metriky k lepšímu měření blahobytu. Zaměřuje se na prohloubení práce Stiglitze, Sena a Fitoussiho z roku 2009 (Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress), přehodnocuje jejich dvanáct doporučení a pokouší se je aplikovat na kolekci možných měření společenského rozvoje.