Submitted by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-04-27T11:59:30Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Max Gontijo de Oliveira - 2012.pdf: 3940401 bytes, checksum: 9d69259096bb8d7b7239f7eb20579d8d (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-04-27T12:01:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Max Gontijo de Oliveira - 2012.pdf: 3940401 bytes, checksum: 9d69259096bb8d7b7239f7eb20579d8d (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T12:01:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Max Gontijo de Oliveira - 2012.pdf: 3940401 bytes, checksum: 9d69259096bb8d7b7239f7eb20579d8d (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-10-08 / Several organizations need to solve the problem of locate and allocate facilities within a geographic area. There are location/allocation problems in various situations, like the distribution of police cars, ambulances, taxi drivers, bus stops among other numerous situations where the location of such facilities is strategic for organization. In location/allocation problems, usually is necessary allocate each demand point to the closest facility. So, each facility will be located in the center of demand points, considering the demand as weight. However, the majority of the real location problems have capacity constraint. Therefore, each facility has a certain capacity based on the type of demand. Facility location problems can be continuous or discrete. In continuous problems (also called Weber problem with multiple sources), any point in the plane is a potential site for the instalation of the facility. There are several approaches for working with continuous models. Furthermore, there are many others works approaches presenting models with capacity constraint. But most of these approaches turns the continous model to a discrete model. The objective of this work thesis is to present an approach to distribution of facilities in instances of the capacitated facility location problem. A case study will be presented with the purpose of evaluating the results. / Diversas organizações precisam lidar com o problema de localizar e alocar facilidades em uma região geográfica. Problemas de localização e alocação podem ser vistos, por exemplo, na distribuição de viaturas policiais, ambulâncias, viaturas de contenção de falhas em redes elétricas, taxistas, pontos de ônibus dentre outras inúmeras situações onde a localização de tais facilidades é um fator estratégico para a organização. Em problemas de localização/alocação de facilidades, geralmente aloca-se cada ponto de demanda à facilidade mais próxima e, localiza-se essa facilidade no centro dos pontos de demanda, considerando o valor da demanda como peso nessa distância. Entretanto, comumente, problemas reais de localização de facilidades possuem restrição de capacidade. Assim, cada facilidade possui uma certa capacidade em função do tipo de demanda. Problemas de localização de facilidades podem ser contínuos ou discretos. Em problemas contínuos (também chamados de problema de Weber com múltiplas fontes), qualquer ponto no plano é um potencial local para se instalar uma facilidade. Existem várias abordagens para trabalhar com modelos contínuos e outras tantas para trabalhar com modelos com restrição de capacidade, mas a maioria dessas abordagens realiza uma discretização do modelo. Assim, o objetivo desse trabalho é apresentar uma abordagem para gerar boas distribuições de facilidades para o problema de localização/alocação contínuo com restrição de capacidade. Um caso de estudo será apresentado com a finalidade de avaliar os resultados obtidos.

Criminal aspects of infringement of Intellectual Property Rights Intellectual property directly relates to the development of society and economy. Higher level of legal protection provided by the State affects the creation of intellectual property objects, since creators are motivated to create in legal environment which provides them with adequate means of rights protection. This thesis lays down an analysis of the means of the Intellectual Property Rights protection in order to determine their level of the protection in the Czech Republic. The author compares civil, administrative and criminal means of protection of copyright and related rights, and industrial rights, and draws attention to their advantages and disadvantages, to gaps and inconsistencies in law, and in appropriate places inserts suggestions de lege ferenda. The thesis addresses not only individuals but also with legal entities, which are also able to infringe protected rights. The thesis concentrates on criminal aspects of Intellectual Property Rights infringement and this issue is therefore the major part of the thesis. Since the criminal law is the most stringent means in the hands of the state, the author explores its role in protecting Intellectual Property Rights. The thesis addresses in detail four crimes against industrial...

A pivotal moment in machine learning research was the creation of an important new research area, known as Ensemble Learning. In this work, we argue that ensembles are a very general concept, and though they have been widely used, they can be applied in more situations than they have been to date. Rather than using them only to combine the output of an algorithm, we can apply them to decisions made inside the algorithm itself, during the learning step. We call this approach Inner Ensembles. The motivation to develop Inner Ensembles was the opportunity to produce models with the similar advantages as regular ensembles, accuracy and stability for example, plus additional advantages such as comprehensibility, simplicity, rapid classification and small memory footprint. The main contribution of this work is to demonstrate how broadly this idea can be applied, and highlight its potential impact on all types of algorithms. To support our claim, we first provide a general guideline for applying Inner Ensembles to different algorithms. Then, using this framework, we apply them to two categories of learning methods: supervised and un-supervised. For the former we chose Bayesian network, and for the latter K-Means clustering. Our results show that 1) the overall performance of Inner Ensembles is significantly better than the original methods, and 2) Inner Ensembles provide similar performance improvements as regular ensembles.

Housing preferences are unique to each individual. Nevertheless, there are certain similarities between the residential needs within the same demographic groups. This research will focus on the students’ housing preferences. The aim is to understand the factors affecting the decision-making process regarding the choice of housing by students in Lublin, Poland. The findings provide guidelines for the future student housing (re)development in the local area. The theoretical concepts used are The Theory of Basic Human Values and The Means-End Chain Theory. They assume that when making decision, the consumer is affected by his/her core values. The research strategy uses qualitative approach. It consists of both primary and secondary data. The first includes conducting interviews with 15 students. The second is based on the literature review and the official documents available at the official local government’s website. The limitations of the research are the bias of authors’ interpretation and exclusion of the students attending smaller, private universities, which may give an inadequate picture for the generalisation of the population. The findings are that the location, finance, privacy continue to be the key determinants in students’ housing choices. Moreover, students value the ability to personalise their rooms and having no noise distractions. They are also attracted to the attributes that improve their sleeping quality. The new generations of students value happiness and have high expectations. Thus, people responsible for the future (re)developments should keep those in mind, when designing the accommodation for students. The implications and guidelines are at the end of each section of data analysis. / Bostadspreferenser är unika för varje individ. Dock, finns det vissa likheter i bostadsbehov inom samma demografiska grupper. Denna studie fokuserar på studenternas boendepreferenser. Syftet är att förstå de faktorer som påverkar beslutsprocessen kring val av bostad för studenter i Lublin, Polen. Resultaten ger ett förslag till framtidsutvecklingen för studentboende i lokalområdet. De teoretiska begreppen som används är Theorin av grundläggande mänskliga värderingar och The Means-End Värdekedja. De innebär att när beslut fattas då påverkas konsumenten av sina grundläggande värden. Forskningsstrategin är baserad på kvalitativ metodologi. Den använder både primär och sekundär data. Den första inkluderar intervjuer med 15 studenter. Den andra baseras på litteraturöversikten och de officiella dokumenten som finns på den offentliga kommunens hemsida. Forskningsbegränsningarna här bias som kommer ifrån författarnas tolkning och resultatet är begränsat med syn på eleverna som går på privata universitet, vilket kan ge inte tillräcklig bild för generaliseringen från den statistiska populationen. Slutsatser är att lokaliseringen, finansieringen och integriteten fortsätter att vara de viktigaste determinanterna i studenternas bostadsval. Dessutom värderar eleverna förmågan att anpassa sina rum på individnivå och inte ha bullerstörningar. De lockas också till de attributen som förbättrar deras sömnkvalitet. De nya studentgenerationerna uppskattar lyckan och har höga förväntningar. Således bör personer som är ansvariga för framtidsutvecklingen tillämpa dem när de utveckla studentboende. Slutsatser och förslaget på de nya riktlinjerna finns i slutet av varje dataanalyskapitel.

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The purpose of this dissertation was three-fold. The first intent was to investigate the historical role of English and American Sign Language (ASL) in the communication, education and culture of deaf/Deaf people in America. The second purpose was to investigate sociolinguistical and physiological properties of American Sign Language in light of language learning among the deaf. And the third objective was to research bilingual education methodologies in order to interface knowledge and practices from bilingual education, communication and ASL research to the field of post-secondary education of the deaf within the framework of bilingual education. Evidence demonstrates that the history of language policies and educational practices for the deaf are strongly influenced by the majority language of English. A primary goal of education of the deaf has been the assimilation of deaf people into the hearing society. An avenue for this integration has traditionally involved the exclusion of ASL from the classroom and the mandate of Signed English systems and/or aural/oral communication. The incorporation of a cross-disciplinary blend of communication, bilingual education and ASL sociolinguistic aspects form the foundation for further investigation. This dissertation should serve as an impetus and reference point for others wishing to advance the education of the deaf, utilizing a bilingual approach.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / David A. Gustafson William Hsu / In this study, we identify a new method of tracking motion over a sequence of images using feature point clusters. We identify and implement a system that takes as input a sequence of images and generates clusters of SIFT features using the K-Means clustering algorithm. Every time the system processes an image it compares each new cluster to the clusters of previous images, which it stores in a local cache. When at least 25% of the SIFT features that compose a cluster match a cluster in the local cache, the system uses the centroid of both clusters in order to determine the direction of travel. To establish a direction of travel, we calculate the slope of the line connecting the centroid of two clusters relative to their Cartesian coordinates in the secondary image. In an experiment using a P3-AT mobile robotic agent equipped with a digital camera, the system receives and processes a sequence of eight images. Experimental results show that the system is able to identify and track the motion of objects using SIFT feature clusters more efficiently when applying spatial outlier detection prior to generating clusters.

In this dissertation we study the Laplace operator acting on functions on a smooth, compact Riemannian manifold. Our approach is based on the study of the spectrum of the aforementioned operator. The main objects of our interest are the counting function of the Laplacian and its Riesz means. We discuss the asymptotics of aforementioned functions when the argument approaches infinity.

While capitalism can be held responsible for many of the numerous social and environmental issues that haunt us today, corporations hold great power and possibilities to compensate for the damage they cause. A solution can be the implementation of Creating Shared Value (CSV), which builds on identifying societal needs and approaching these as business opportunities. By doing so, value can be created for society whilst driving business results. The purpose of this thesis is to examine what factors influence the implementation of CSV in companies operating in Sweden. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with experts who have worked with CSV. Factors that influence the implementation of CSV policies and practices, as well as factors that influence whether these lead to the desired goal of shared value creation have been extracted. The findings suggest that the public’s prevailing distrust towards companies’ engagement in solving social issues is the most noteworthy barrier for implementation of CSV, while managerial buy-in and understanding of the concept represent the strongest enabler. Getting lost in rhetoric and belief in the concept as well as focusing too strongly on measuring procedures illustrate the two greatest risks for implemented CSV policies and practice to become decoupled from the end goal of shared value creation.