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Given the overall increase in the availability of computational resources, and the importance of forecasting the future, it should come as no surprise that prediction is considered to be one of the most compelling and challenging problems for both academia and industry in the world of data analytics. But how is prediction done, what factors make it easier or harder to do, how accurate can we expect the results to be, and can we harness the available computational resources in meaningful ways? With efforts ranging from those designed to save lives in the moments before a near field tsunami to others attempting to predict the performance of Major League Baseball players, future generations need to have realistic expectations about prediction methods and analytics. This thesis takes a broad look at the problem, including motivation, methodology, accuracy, and infrastructure. In particular, a careful study involving experiments in regression, the prediction of continuous, numerical values, and classification, the assignment of a class to each sample, is provided. The results and conclusions of these experiments cover only the included data sets and the applied algorithms as implemented by the Python library. The evaluation includes accuracy and running time of different algorithms across several data sets to establish tradeoffs between the approaches, and determine the impact of variations in the size of the data sets involved. As scalability is a key characteristic required to meet the needs of future prediction problems, a discussion of some of the challenges associated with parallelization is included. / Graduate / 0984 / erickson@uvic.ca

This study aims to investigate the settlement patterns of Altinova in the Early Bronze Age and its reflection to social and cultural phenomena. Altinova, which is the most arable plain in Eastern Anatolia, is situated in the borders of Elazig province. The region in the Early Bronze Age was the conjunction and interaction area for two main cultural complexes in the Near East, which were Syro-Mesopotamia and Transcaucasia, with a strong local character. The effect of the foreign and local cultural interactions to the settlement patterns of Altinova in the Early Bronze Age and its reflection in the socio-economic structures have been discussed in the social perspective. In addition, the settlement distribution and its system were analyzed through the quantitative methods, that were gravity model, rank-size analysis, and nearest neighbor analysis. The results of these quantitative analyses with the archaeological data have been discussed in the social and theoretical context.

A k nearest neighbor query q retrieves k objects that lie closest to the query point q among a given set of objects P. With the availability of inexpensive location aware mobile devices, the continuous monitoring of such queries has gained lot of attention and many methods have been proposed for continuously monitoring the kNNs in highly dynamic environment. Multiple continuous queries require real-time results and both the objects and queries issue frequent location updates. Most popular spatial index, R-tree, is not suitable for continuous monitoring of these queries due to its inefficiency in handling frequent updates. Recently, the interest of database community has been shifting towards using grid-based index for continuous queries due to its simplicity and efficient update handling. For kNN queries, the order in which cells of the grid are accessed is very important. In this research, we present two efficient and effective grid access methods, CircularTrip and ArcTrip, that ensure that the number of cells visited for any continuous kNN query is minimum. Our extensive experimental study demonstrates that CircularTrip-based continuous kNN algorithm outperforms existing approaches in terms of both efficiency and space requirement. Moreover, we show that CircularTrip and ArcTrip can be used for many other variants of nearest neighbor queries like constrained nearest neighbor queries, farthest neighbor queries and (k + m)-NN queries. All the algorithms presented for these queries preserve the properties that they visit minimum number of cells for each query and the space requirement is low. Our proposed techniques are flexible and efficient and can be used to answer any query that is hybrid of above mentioned queries. For example, our algorithms can easily be used to efficiently monitor a (k + m) farthest neighbor query in a constrained region with the flexibility that the spatial conditions that constrain the region can be changed by the user at any time.

市地重劃係依照都市發展趨勢及都市計畫規劃內容，將一定範圍內畸零細碎不規則之土地，依據法令加以重新整理，重劃區內土地除配合公共設施興建後，其餘可建築用地依原位次分配原則、調整分配原則並留設抵費地後，重新分配予原土地所有權人，其最終目的是地權的調整，而地權調整屬於交易行為，有交易便會有成本，而價格是交易成本的剩餘，在市地重劃開發的過程及後續標得抵費地的土地利用行為中存在交易成本，交易成本的降低可帶來抵費地價格的提升。 重劃完成後各宗抵費地的區位條件與個別條件均不相同，傳統地價影響因素研究多著重於宗地的條件，例如宗地面積、公設可及性、使用分區等，對於土地建築利用與產權整合並無太多著墨，本研究從重劃後建築開發的角度切入，探討以公辦重劃方式所留設的抵費地，其宗地個別條件、土地使用管制、區位、規模及相鄰土地整合難易度，對於交易成本及開發績效有何影響，研究影響抵費地標售價格的因素。 本研究蒐集了林口新市鎮第三期市地重劃區抵費地及相關土地資訊，透過是否建築作為條件篩選，並以189筆合併建築之案例為樣本，運用特徵價格模型，以每平方公尺抵費地標售單價作為應變數，選取13個可能影響抵費地標售價格的應變數，進行實證分析研究。實證結果顯示抵費地的容積率、所面臨最大路寬、面臨主要道路面寬、至學校距離及標售時間等5個因素對於抵費地標售價格呈現正向影響；而抵費地的面積、鄰地權屬複雜度、深度、寬深比等4個因素對於抵費地標售價格呈現負向影響。 公辦市地重劃政府具有土地分配的規劃及主導權，在抵費地面積有限的情況下，倘能了解抵費地的區位、規模與效益之關係，在訂定分配原則及抵費地劃設時考量上述影響抵費地標售價格的因素，以降低交易成本，即可望降低地主共同負擔或創造盈餘以留供重劃區內建設與管理維護，提升開發效益。 / A urban land readjustment (ULR) project follows the trend of urban development and the urban planning, it readjusts all fragmental and irregular land in the area. After building the land of public in the area, the rest of buildable land will be allocated to landlords and reserve the cost equivalent land by distribution principle. The final purpose of ULR is to adjust the property of land. That way of adjustment is a transaction which comes with the cost, and the residual of transaction cost is price. There is transaction cost in the process of ULR project and in the use of cost equivalent land. The reduction of the transaction cost will rise the price of cost equivalent land. The area and individual condition of all the cost equivalent land is different after URL project. The traditional research of land price focus on the condition of land, for example, the area of the land, the accessibility of public facilities and the land use zoning , but less attention in the using of building and the conformity of property. In this research, we discuss the cost equivalent land with the point of building development by ULR, and the effect of the transaction cost to develop performance by analyzing individual condition, land using constrain, area, size, conformity of land. We also study on the factor of the price of cost equivalent land. In this research, we gather the cost equivalent land of Lin-Kou New Town URL and other related information of land. We use the data screened by purpose to build to integrate 189 lands for the base of experimental research, and using the Hedonic Price Method to set the model in which the unit price of cost equivalent land (per square meter ) as the dependent variable and thirteen impact factors as independent variables.。The experiment result shows that five factors including the floor area ratio of cost equivalent land, the maximum width of neighbor road, the width of neighbor, the distance from school and the time for sale have positive impact to the price of the cost equivalent land. On the other hand, the four factors including the area of the cost equivalent land, the complexity of neighbor property, the depth of land and the ratio of width to depth have negative impact to the price of the cost equivalent land. The government has dominant and plan of land distribution by URL-led by the government, for a limited area of cost equivalent land, if we can realize the relationship among region, size and efficiency of cost equivalent land which effect the price of cost equivalent land, it can reduce the transaction cost when we set up the rule of land and cost equivalent land distribution. We can reduce average burden of landlords or make surplus for construction and management for URL, and also promote the efficiency of development.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the life and work of St. Zdislava and St. Agnes of Bohemia. In the first part, there is a description of biographies of both saints, their vocation in life, charity and foundation work, their life-works. The second part compares the differences between St. Zdislava and St. Agnes of Bohemia and vice versa, it mentions their commonalities, further it describes motivation and source of strength St. Zdislava and St. Agnes of Bohemia for their foundation and charity activities. The conclusion is devoted to the reference and relevance of the topic of marriage and religious life today.

Text in German / This dissertation is a contribution in the field of Homiletics, a sub-discipline in the area of Practical Theology. It also touches the subjects of Counseling, Cy-bernetics and Religious Pedagogy. Furthermore, it also is concerned with the other theological disciplines: Theology of the OT and NT, Missiology and Sys-tematic Theology. This work also refers intra-disciplinarily to findings in Ethol-ogy, Management Theory, Neurobiology, Neuropsychotherapy and Socio-logy. The basic thesis is, "The goal of the biblical message is the mission oriented church to the glory of God, to the salvation and well-being of man." This will be demonstrated from the Holy Scriptures and made applicable to preaching and to church growth and development. The observation of the church's message results in a new thesis: "The aban-donment of the soteriological message of the church is the main reason for the dwindling of her spiritual power and therewith also of her eschatological and po-litical significance." The abandonment of the mission goes back to a christo-logical crisis. This is grounded on the preaching of less than Biblical messages with negative consequences for the church and for the people whose need for the Gospel remains unfulfilled. It will be shown that in the OT and NT various missions of the Trinity are ob-servable which are to be understood soteriologically, with the exception of the Creation. The Bible is the written expression of these missions that are evidenced within it. The distinct dynamic of the mission of Jesus is based on His obedience, His struggle against the powers of evil and the dedication of His life for the Salva-tion of the world. The ministry that preaches reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18) represents the one who reconciled the world to Himself. The dynamic of His mission corresponds to the dynamic role of the ministry of preaching. It is incumbent on the ministry to evangelize and equip the church members for their service in the congregation. The purpose of equipping the church and calling together is to practice missions. The implementation of missions will bring about a basic positive change in the attitude of the church and her pastoral activities. Because of this, we see that our usual understanding of the sermon is based on the ecclesiological misunder-standing to adress the sermon to individuals (the listener) instead to a faithful body of Christ. The church must be obedient in a new way regard to the question of mission. This is a question of life or death. The message that is preached by the church will lead it either to destruction or to the goal-centered, missions-oriented interaction of her charisms - to the glory of God and the salvation of humankind. Deutsche Zusammenfassung Diese Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zur Homiletik, einer Teildisziplin der Praktischen Theologie. Dabei berührt sie weitere ihrer Fachrichtungen wie Seelsorge, Kybernetik, Religionspädagogik. Zudem greift sie auf andere theologische Disziplinen zurück: Theologie des AT und NT, Missiologie, Systematische Theologie. Ebenso bezieht sich die Arbeit intradisziplinär auf Ergebnisse der Ethologie, Managementtheorie, Neurobiologie, Neuropsychotherapie, Soziologie. Die Grundthese lautet: ,,Das Ziel biblischer Verkündigung ist die sendungs-orientierte Gemeinde - Gott zum Lob, dem Menschen zur ewigen Rettung und zeitlichem Wohl." Das wird aus der Schrift nachgewiesen und für die Verkündigung und Gemeindeentwicklung fruchtbar gemacht. Aus Wahrnehmungen des hiesigen Predigtgeschehen ergibt sich eine Erkenntnis: ,,Die Preisgabe ihrer soteriologisch zu verstehenden Sendung ist die Hauptursache dafür, dass die spirituelle Kraft der Kirche schwindet und damit ihre eschatologische und politische Bedeutung." Die Preisgabe der Sendung geht auf eine Krise des Christusglaubens der Gemeinde zurück. Diese hat ihre Ursache in der an sie ergehenden Predigt mit schlimmen Folgen für die Gemeinde und die Menschen, denen sie das Evangelium schuldig bleibt. Es wird gezeigt, dass im AT und NT verschiedene Sendungen des Dreieinigen bezeugt sind, die sich, abgesehen von der Schöpfung, soteriologisch verstehen. Die Bibel ist der schriftliche Niederschlag, der in ihr bezeugten Sendungen. Die besondere Dynamik der Sendung Jesu ergibt sich aus seinem Gehorsam, seinem Kampf gegen die Mächte, seiner Lebenshingabe zum Heil der Welt. Der Dienst, der Versöhnung predigt (2. Kor 5,18), repräsentiert den, der die Welt mit sich versöhnte. Der Dynamik seiner Sendung entspricht das dynamische Predigtamt. Ihm obliegt die Zurüstung und Sammlung der Gemeinde mit dem Ziel ihrer Sendung. Die ,,Sammlung zur Sendung" führt zu grundlegenden, positiven Veränderungen der Gemeinden und ihrer pfarramtlichen Praxis. Es zeigt sich, dass unsere gewöhnliche Predigtauffassung auf einem ekklesiologischen Missverständnis beruht: Statt verbindliche, zielgerichtete Sendungsrede zu sein, ist Predigt individualisierende ,,Seelenbedienung". Adressat ist der einzelne Hörer, nicht die sendungsorientierte Gemeinde als Leib Christi. - Die Kirche steht im Blick auf ihre Sendung vor der Frage des Gehorsams als einer Frage von Leben oder Tod. Ihre Predigt führt die Gemeinden entweder ins Verderben oder zum sendungsorientierten Zusammenspiel ihrer Charismen und Dienste - zur Ehre Gottes und der Rettung und dem Wohl der Menschen. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th.

Este trabalho apresenta uma investigação pioneira dos encadeamentos que conduziram a formação da coleção de arte brasileira do Museu de Arte Moderna de Nova York (MoMA), buscando desvendar os fatores que levaram peças nacionais a serem incorporadas ao acervo da proeminente instituição americana, partindo da primeira aquisição em 1939 e mapeando todos os ingressos ao longo dos anos 1940. O objetivo central do estudo é compreender os processos históricos que direcionaram a aquisição e permitiram a recepção das obras por parte da instituição no período investigado, bem como os fatores que permitiram que ela divulgasse a arte brasileira no contexto cultural americano no decênio de 1940. / This study presents a pioneering effort to set out the formation processes of the Museum of Modern Art in Ney York (MoMA) Brazilian art collection, revealing the sequence of events that lead artworks from Brazil to be acquired by this institution from 1939 to 1949. Its aim is to understand the historical scenarios that allowed these artworks to be received by the museum in the delimited time, as well as to comprehend the reasons that propelled MoMA to promote Brazilian art in the 1940s. The investigation work was based on correspondence of key people in this process Nelson Rockefeller, Alfred H. Barr Jr., Lincoln Kirstein and Cândido Portinari as well as on documents produced by the MoMA; the results of this research opens new possibilities of understanding the relations between Brazil and the United States, in the fields of art, culture and politics.

Com o crescente aumento no número de imagens geradas em mídias digitais surgiu a necessidade do desenvolvimento de novas técnicas de recuperação desses dados. Um critério de busca que pode ser utilizado na recuperação das imagens é o da dissimilaridade, no qual o usuário deseja recuperar as imagens semelhantes à uma imagem de consulta. Para a realização das consultas são empregados vetores de características extraídos das imagens e funções de distância para medir a dissimilaridade entre pares desses vetores. Infelizmente, a busca por conteúdo de imagens em consultas simples tende a gerar resultados que não correspondem ao interesse do usuário misturados aos resultados significativos encontrados, pois em geral há uma descontinuidade semântica entre as características extraídas automaticamente e a subjetividade da interpretação humana. Com o intuito de tratar esse problema, diversos métodos foram propostos para a diminuição da descontinuidade semântica. O foco principal desta tese é o desenvolvimento de métodos escaláveis para a redução da descontinuidade semântica em sistemas recuperação de imagens por conteúdo em tempo real. Nesta sentido, são apresentados: a formalização de consultas por similaridade que permitem a utilização de múltiplos centros de consulta em espaços métricos como base para métodos de realimentação de relevância; um método exato para otimização dessas consultas nesses espaços; e um modelo para tratamento da diversidade em consultas por similaridade e heurísticas para sua otimização / The increasing number of images captured in digital media fostered the developmet of new methods for the recovery of these images. Dissimilarity is a criteria that can be used for image retrieval, where the results are images that are similar to a given reference. The queries are based on feature vectors automatically extracted from the images and on distance functions to measure the dissimilarity between pair of vectors. Unfortunately, the search for images in simple queries may result in images that do not fulfill the user interest together with meaningful images, due to the semantic gap between the image features and to the subjectivity of the human interpretation. This problem leaded to the development of many methods to deal with the semantic gap. The focus of this thesis is the development of scalable methods aiming the semantic gap reduction in real time for content-based image retrieval systems. For this purpose, we present the formal definition of similarity queries based on multiple query centers in metric spaces to be used in relevance feedback methods, an exact method to optimize these queries and a model to deal with diversity in nearest neighbor queries including heuristics for its optimization

Cette thèse se positionne dans le cadre de l'algorithmique distribuée tolérante aux pannes adaptée aux réseaux mobiles à grande échelle.L'auto-stabilisation est une approche de tolérance aux pannes satisfaisante dans les systèmes ayant des perturbations transitoires, mais pas dans les réseaux très dynamiques à grande échelle. La faute est due à l'éventuelle absence totale de service lorsque les perturbations sont fréquentes.Pour remédier à cet inconvénient, nous avons introduit l'approche auto-stabilisation robuste apportant une garantie de service pendant la phase de stabilisation.La garantie de service offerte par l'auto-stabilisation robuste est assurée via : (1) le délai de reprise d'un service minimum, et(2) la préservation du service minimum pendant la convergence vers un service optimum en dépit de l'occurrence de certaines perturbations hautement tolérées.L'intérêt d'avoir la propriété auto-stabilisation robuste est d'assurer une haute disponibilité du système en dépit de l'occurrence des perturbations et changements topologiques.Dans cette thèse, nous proposons, prouvons et évaluons une suite protocolaire auto-stabilisante robuste.Dans un premier temps, nous proposons deux protocoles auto-stabilisants robustes pour les problèmes de partitionnement, et l'établissement et le maintien de la connaissance des clusters voisins.Les deux protocoles sont écrits dans le modèle à états et fonctionnent sous l'hypothèse d'un démon distribué faiblement équitable.Le protocole de partitionnement, baptisé R-BSC, permet de partitionner le réseau en clusters à 1-saut. Les noeuds choisis pour être leaders sont les plus aptes à ce rôle, et les clusters construits sont de taille bornée dans le but d'équilibrer la charge entre leaders.Le protocole R-BSC fournit rapidement, en 4 rounds seulement, un service minimum où le réseau est complètement partitionné en clusters de taille bornée.Pendant la convergence vers un service optimum, où les leaders seront bien les noeuds les plus aptes et leur nombre sera réduit localement, le service minimum restera préservé. Le protocole de connaissance des clusters voisins, baptisé R-CNK, permet à chaque leader de connaître l'identité des leaders des clusters voisins, les chemins menant vers eux, ainsi que la composition (liste des noeuds ordinaires) des clusters voisins.Le service minimum de notre protocole R-CNK, atteint après 4 rounds seulement, garantit que tout leader connaît toujours des chemins vers tous les leaders des clusters voisins. Ce service minimum est maintenu en dépit des changements de la structure hiérarchique : création / destruction des clusters, changement de composition des clusters suite au départ / arrivé des noeuds ordinaires.Un deuxième aspect de nos travaux concerne l'évaluation des protocoles conçus (R-BSC et R-CNK) dans le contexte des réseaux mobiles.Nous avons mené une étude expérimentale sous le simulateur NS2 pour évaluer les performances de nos protocoles, ainsi que ceux des protocoles auto-stabilisants correspondants.Cette étude a montré que nos protocoles R-BSC et R-CNK offrent de meilleurs performances en terme de garantie de service, d'où l'efficacité de l'approche auto-stabilisation robuste par rapport à l'auto-stabilisation classique. / This dissertation is focused on fault-tolerant distributed algorithms adapted to large scale mobile networks.Self-stabilization is a fault-tolerance approach suited for systems with transient disruptions, but not for large scale dynamic networks.The fault is due to the eventual total lack of service when faults occur frequently.To address this drawback, we have introduced the robust self-stabilization approach that improves the service guarantee during the stabilization phase.The service guarantee provided by the robust self-stabilization is achieved via:(1) fast recovery to a minimum service and(2) preservation of minimum service during the convergence to an optimum service despite the occurrence of highly tolerated disruptions.Having the robust self-stabilization property ensures a high availability of the system despite the occurrence disruptions and topological changes in the network.In this thesis, we propose, evaluate and prove a series of robust self-stabilizing protocols.At first, we propose two robust self-stabilizing protocols for both problems : clustering and the maintain of knowledge about neighbor clusters.The two protocols are written in the local shared memory model and operate under the assumption of a weakly fair distributed daemon.The clustering protocol, called R-BSC, gathers the network nodes into 1-hop clusters.It allows a best choice of leaders, and it builds clusters with limited size in order to balance the load between leaders.The protocol R-BSC quickly provides, after at most 4 rounds, a minimum service where the network is completely partitioned into bounded-size clusters.During the convergence towards an optimum service, in which leaders will be the most appropriate nodes and their number will be reduced locally, the minimum service is preserved.The protocol for knowledge of neighbor clusters, called R-CNK, allows each leader to know the identity of leaders of neighbor clusters, paths leading to them, and the composition (list of ordinary nodes) of its neighbor clusters.The minimum service provided by of R-CNK protocol, reached after 4 rounds, ensures that every leader always knows paths towards all the leaders of neighbor clusters.We conducted an experimental study using the simulator NS2 to evaluate and to compare the performance of our protocols (R-BSC and R-CNK) with those of their self-stabilizing version in the context of mobile networks.This study confirmed that our protocols R-BSC and R-CNK offer a better service guarantee.