<p>Doktorska disertacija se bavi temama rešavanja računarski teških<br />problema kombinatorne optimizacije. Istaknut je problem maksimalne<br />klike kao predstavnik određenih struktura u grafovima. Problem<br />maksimalne klike i sa njim povezani problemi su formulisani kao<br />nelinearne funkcije. Rešavani su sa ciljem otkrivanja novih metoda<br />koje pronalaze dobre aproksimacije rešenja za neko razumno vreme.<br />Predložene su varijante Metode promenljivih okolina na rešavanje<br />maksimalne klike u grafu. Povezani problemi na grafovima se mogu<br />primeniti na pretragu informacija, raspoređivanje, procesiranje<br />signala, teoriju klasifikacije, teoriju kodiranja, itd. Svi algoritmi<br />su implementirani i uspešno testirani na brojnim različitim<br />primerima.</p> / <p>This Ph.D. thesis addresses topics NP hard problem solving approaches in<br />combinatorial optimization and according to that it is highlighted maximum<br />clique problem as a representative of certain structures in graphs. Maximum<br />clique problem and related problems with this have been formulated as non<br />linear functions which have been solved to research for new methods and<br />good solution approximations for some reasonable time. It has been<br />proposed several different extensions of Variable Neighborhood Search<br />method. Related problems on graphs could be applied on information<br />retrieval, scheduling, signal processing, theory of classi_cation, theory of<br />coding, etc. Algorithms are implemented and successfully tested on various<br />different tasks.</p>

Les immigrants allophones qui s’établissent dans la région métropolitaine de recensement (RMR) de Montréal sont vraisemblablement confrontés à la concurrence qui y existe entre le français et l’anglais. À l’aide de données agrégées du recensement canadien de 2006, nous explorons le rôle que pourrait jouer l’environnement linguistique résidentiel dans l’adoption de deux comportements linguistiques; le transfert linguistique vers le français ou l’anglais et la connaissance des langues officielles chez ceux n’ayant pas effectué de transfert, tout en tenant compte de leurs caractéristiques individuelles. Des liens initiaux existent entre la composition linguistique des 56 quartiers de la RMR et les comportements linguistiques des immigrants allophones. De plus, des caractéristiques individuelles similaires mènent à des orientations linguistiques similaires. Sans séparer ces deux effets, des régressions linéaires nous permettent de croire que la connaissance de l’anglais et/ou du français n’est pas déterminée par la composition linguistique du quartier, alors que cette dernière ne peut être écartée lorsque nous analysons la langue d’usage à la maison (transferts). / Immigrants with a mother tongue other than French or English are likely to face the existing concurrence between these two languages when settling down in the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Using agregated data from the 2006 Canadian Census, the potential role of residential linguistic environment on two measures of immigrants` language behavior is explored : language shift at home (from a third language to the use of French or English) and French or English proficiency (of those who did not shift), along with the consideration of their individual caracteristics. Initial links are observed between language composition of the 56 neighborhoods of the CMA and language behavior of the immigrants. Moreover, similar individual caracteristics seem to lead to similar language behaviors. Linear regressions cannot distinguish both effects, but tend to show that language proficiency in French and/or English is not determined by neighborhood caracteristics. However, evidence suggests that the potential significant role of the language composition of the neighborhood on the language shift at home cannot be overlooked.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Ce mémoire porte sur l’étude du développement d’un sentiment d’appartenance à l’échelle d’un quartier dans un contexte de croissance de la mobilité des individus. À travers ce travail, il s’agit d’observer les formes que prend ce sentiment alors que les limites du territoire quotidien ne cessent d’être repoussées et que les individus sont de moins en moins ancrés de façon permanente sur un territoire. Dès lors, la pertinence du quartier est remise en cause. L’étude a pris pour cadre d’analyse l’arrondissement Plateau-Mont-Royal en raison de son caractère atypique et exemplaire en matière de forte mobilité de ses résidants et de la perception d’un sentiment d’appartenance territoriale marqué. Afin d’alimenter la réflexion, des entretiens ont été réalisés auprès de dix résidants de l’arrondissement recrutés lors d’un rendez-vous citoyen. Ces rencontres ont permis de comprendre que la mobilité des résidants ne répond pas à la tangente de la croissance observée. La flexibilité et la liberté d’avoir le choix de quitter son lieu de résidence sont des aptitudes valorisées, mais l’ancrage demeure prisé. Cette divergence s’inscrit dans une démarche particulière; celle de vivre selon un mode de vie où l’espace du quartier est priorisé à travers la mobilité quotidienne. Dans ce contexte, le sentiment d’appartenance se développe en direction d’un mode de vie, honorant un ensemble de valeurs, plutôt qu’à un territoire. Selon cette approche, l’arrondissement Plateau-Mont-Royal joue le second rôle; il représente le catalyseur et la vitrine de ce mode de vie, facilitant ainsi le regroupement des individus sous des valeurs communes. / This master’s thesis focuses on the study of the development of a sense of belonging to a neighborhood in the context of increasing mobility of people. Through this work, we will observe the forms taken by this sense of belonging while the boundaries of everyday life are constantly being pushed and that people are less anchored permanently on territory. Therefore, the relevance of the neighborhood is questionable. The study took for its analytical framework the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough because of its unusual nature, because it is an actual model in terms of high mobility of its residents, and because it is a perceived significant sense of place. To foster reflection, interviews were conducted with ten borough residents recruited during a citizen’s meeting. These interviews helped to understand that the mobility of residents does not meet the tangent of the growth. The flexibility and freedom to have the choice to leave a place of residence are valued skills, but the residential stability remains sought after. This discrepancy is part of a particular approach, that of living in a lifestyle where the neighborhood is prioritized through daily mobility. In this context, the sense of belonging is developed for the lifestyle, promoting a set of values rather than a place. Under this approach, the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough is playing a second role, representing a catalyst and a showcase for this lifestyle, thus facilitating the coming together of people in shared values.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Hyung Jin Kim / Obesity levels—related to an increase of physical inactivity—are rapidly rising in the United States (CDC 2010; Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion 2008). Reportedly, African-American women have the highest obesity rates when compared to any other demographic in the United States—especially those residing in crime-plagued urban environments (CDC 2010). Yet active living strategies by designers have been least effective amongst this demographic (Day 2006). Researchers report crime-safety perceptions are one of the biggest environmental factors influencing physical activity levels amongst low-income African-American women (Foster and Giles-Corti 2008; Codinhoto 2009). Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) has been the most common practice towards an intervention of criminal activity in the built environment; however, little practice has addressed both CPTED and physical activity. While first and second generation crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) are inclusive of addressing both physical and social aspects of the built environment (Cleveland and Seville 2008; Griffin et al. 2008; Dekeseredy et al. 2009), they have yet to effectively address crime-safety needs and its potential relationship with physical activity behaviors of low-income African-American women and their neighborhoods. Therefore, what built environment changes tailored for this target population—African- American women—are necessary? This study examines 1) what crime safety perceptions of the built environment are affecting low--income African American women’s physical activity levels in Kansas City, Missouri and 2) what design solutions these women suggest could help increase their physical activity levels, through improving their perceptions of neighborhood safety. As a place-specific study on a low income neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri, selected through GIS suitability analyses with literature-based criteria, this study used survey and focus group interview methods to identify the target group’s design suggestions. The findings resulted with a connection from research to design solutions—neighborhood and street-level design strategies with CPTED guidelines linking the researched participant’s perceptions of crime in their built environment to the effect of crime on their own physical activity.

The Desire Housing Project opened in 1956 as a segregated public housing development in New Orleans‟ Upper Ninth Ward. The Desire neighborhood, one of the few neighborhoods in the city where black homeownership had been encouraged, was transformed by the project. Hundreds of former Desire residents were displaced by the mammoth project, which became home to more than 13,000 residents by 1958. Built on what had once been a landfill, the Desire Housing Project came to epitomize the worst in public housing, before it was torn down by 2001. Although the project was isolated from the rest of the city and lacked basic services, residents worked to create a viable community, in spite of the pitfalls of segregation. Within the context of the civil rights movement, Desire residents fought to bring in basic services, pushing local government to more fully develop their neighborhood.

Air pollution is a global problem and concern that affects every nation around the world.One of the chemical elements that is part of bad air quality is Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2).Children are a vulnerable group to air pollution due to their immature health system, thusplanning for safe and healthy neighborhoods is essential for their future development.Sweden is a one of the international leaders of sustainable development, with Gothenburgone of the main cities in the country that has an impressive ecological concern. The purposeof this study is to measure the exposure of children, ages 0 – 15 years old, to NO2 on aneighborhood level in Gothenburg.With the use of the software ArcGIS 10.6.1 and the spreadsheet Microsoft Excel, it waspossible to analyze the neighborhoods where children live and are exposed to bad air qualityas well as identify family neighborhoods that might also be high pollution areas. The resultsshow different conclusions between the age groups of children while the mean levels of airpollution are mostly concentrated in the city center.

O objetivo desta pesquisa é o estudo da presença dos imigrantes japoneses na Liberdade, bairro central de São Paulo, no período anterior ao bairro ser oficialmente caracterizado pelo poder público como Bairro Oriental, o que ocorre na metade da década de 1970. O estudo aborda a instalação dos primeiros japoneses na Liberdade, as atividades econômicas que desenvolveram, as instituições japonesas de auxílio presentes e os setores do bairro que ocuparam de 1908 até a metade da década de 1960, período em que se envolveram em grande diversidade de atividades econômicas. / The objective of this research is to study the presence of Japanese immigrants in neighborhood of Liberdade, central district of São Paulo, in the period before the district was officially characterized by the government as Eastern District, which happens in the middle of the 1970s. The research shows the installation of the first Japanese in the neighborhood of Liberdade, the economic activities they have developed, the Japanese institutions of assistance and the sectors of the district they occupied from 1908 until the middle of the 1960s, a period when they have engaged in wide range of economic activities.

Com o aumento da capacidade de armazenamento, as bases de dados são cada vez maiores e, em muitas situações, apenas um pequeno subconjunto de itens de dados pode ser rotulado. Isto acontece devido ao processo de rotulagem ser frequentemente caro, demorado e necessitar do envolvimento de especialistas humanos. Com isso, diversos algoritmos semissupervisionados foram propostos, mostrando que é possível obter bons resultados empregando conhecimento prévio, relativo à pequena fração de dados rotulados. Dentre esses algoritmos, os que têm ganhado bastante destaque na área têm sido aqueles baseados em redes. Tal interesse, justifica-se pelas vantagens oferecidas pela representação via redes, tais como, a possibilidade de capturar a estrutura topológica dos dados, representar estruturas hierárquicas, bem como modelar manifolds no espaço multi-dimensional. No entanto, existe uma grande quantidade de dados representados em tabelas atributo-valor, nos quais não se poderia aplicar os algoritmos baseados em redes sem antes construir uma rede a partir desses dados. Como a geração das redes, assim como sua relação com o desempenho dos algoritmos têm sido pouco estudadas, esta tese investigou esses aspectos e propôs novos métodos para construção de redes, considerando características ainda não exploradas na literatura. Foram propostos três métodos para construção de redes com diferentes topologias: 1) S-kNN (Sequential k Nearest Neighbors), que gera redes regulares; 2) GBILI (Graph Based on the Informativeness of Labeled Instances) e RGCLI (Robust Graph that Considers Labeled Instances), que exploram os rótulos disponíveis gerando redes com distribuição de grau lei de potência; 3) GBLP (Graph Based on Link Prediction), que se baseia em medidas de predição de links gerando redes com propriedades mundo-pequeno. As estratégias de construção de redes propostas foram analisadas por meio de medidas de teoria dos grafos e redes complexas e validadas por meio da classificação semissupervisionada. Os métodos foram aplicados em benchmarks da área e também na classificação de gêneros musicais e segmentação de imagens. Os resultados mostram que a topologia da rede influencia diretamente os algoritmos de classificação e as estratégias propostas alcançam boa acurácia. / With the increase capacity of storage, databases are getting larger and, in many situations, only a small subset of data items can be labeled. This happens because the labeling process is often expensive, time consuming and requires the involvement of human experts. Hence, several semi-supervised algorithms have been proposed, showing that it is possible to achieve good results by using prior knowledge. Among these algorithms, those based on graphs have gained prominence in the area. Such interest is justified by the benefits provided by the representation via graphs, such as the ability to capture the topological structure of the data, represent hierarchical structures, as well as model manifold in high dimensional spaces. Nevertheless, most of available data is represented by attribute-value tables, making necessary the study of graph construction techniques in order to convert these tabular data into graphs for applying such algorithms. As the generation of the weight matrix and the sparse graph, and their relation to the performance of the algorithms have been little studied, this thesis investigated these aspects and proposed new methods for graph construction with characteristics litle explored in the literature yet. We have proposed three methods for graph construction with different topologies: 1) S-kNN (Sequential k Nearest Neighbors) that generates regular graphs; 2) GBILI (Graph Based on the informativeness of Labeled Instances) and RGCLI (Robust Graph that Considers Labeled Instances), which exploit the labels available generating power-law graphs; 3) GBLP (Graph Based on Link Prediction), which are based on link prediction measures and generates small-world graphs. The strategies proposed were analyzed by graph theory and complex networks measures and validated in semi-supervised classification tasks. The methods were applied in benchmarks of the area and also in the music genre classification and image segmentation. The results show that the topology of the graph directly affects the classification algorithms and the proposed strategies achieve good accuracy.