In recent years, many Western European urban public transport systems have undergone major reorganisation, including London (1985), Madrid (1985), Manchester (1986), Zurich (1990), Antwerp (1991), Copenhagen (1991), Athens (1992,1993), Gothenburg (1993) and Hamburg (1996). Other cities are also about to implement reorganisationsin their public transports ystems. Despite this, and with the exception of the British case, relatively little attention has been paid in the literature to the determinants and effects of these changes. Nevertheless, economics has benefited from individual contributions from people involved in these reorganisations. The aim of this thesis is to address two main weaknessesin the existing literature on the organisationo f urban public transport. Firstly, there is a distinct shortage of studies integrating different experiences in terms of forms of organisation.a nd their important features. Hence, emphasisi n this thesis is placed on examining structural changes in urban public transport, using a broad typology of organisations, and to explore related changes in the conduct and performance of public transport systems. A second weakness of the literature is the lack of detailed evaluations of the link between forms of organisation and the performance of transport operators. The evaluation of this link is carried out making use of case studies of Metro de Madrid and London Underground. The key objective of this thesis is to explore the existence of a link between organisation of the urban public transport markets and the performance of transport operators. Ile empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that reorganisations induce changes in performance levels. Additionally, in the cases of Metro de Madrid and London Underground, efficiency and effectiveness values emerge as positively correlated which is contrary to evidence presented in previous work.

This thesis is concerned with the problem of construction of the logical structure of a persuasive discourse. A persuasive discourse can be defined as a monodirectional form of communication, generated by a speaker in order to convince a hearer about the validity (or fallacy) of a specific belief The construction of the structure of a persuasive discourse is realized, in this work, through the adoption of two basic elements: a belief system and a planning system. The planning system is used as a tool for the automatic generation of the discourse structure (or plan), obtained through the decomposition of the assigned (communicative) goals of persuasion, aimed at producing specific effects on the hearer’s beliefs. The belief system is adopted in order to endow the planning process with a formal language of beliefs for the representation of such goals, and with the mechanisms which govern the propagation of their (expected) effects on the rest of the hearer's belief state. The main results presented consist of the formalization of a paradigm for specification of belief systems, and of a method — whose correctness is formally proved — for their integration with planning systems. The formalization of a belief system for discourse structure representation (defined in accordance with the theoretical paradigm) is also given, together with the description of its implementation and integration with a specific planner, which resulted in the actual completion of a system for the automatic generation of persuasive discourse plans.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1987. / "June 1987." "Also numbered Classic-87-03"--Cover. "This research was supported by NASA Ames Consortium Agreement NASA NCA2-150 and Office of Naval Research Contracts N00014-86-K-0565, N00014-82-K-0335, N00014-75-C-1132"--P. vi. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129).

Thesis ( Ph.D. ) -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-66). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Mathematics and Statistics. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-108). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR51694

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2005. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 49 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

First published in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society in 1963, published by the American Mathematical Society

For many years mathematicians have been interested in the problem of whether an operator ideal is complemented in the space of all bounded linear operators. In this dissertation the complementation of various classes of operators in the space of all bounded linear operators is considered. This paper begins with a preliminary discussion of linear bounded operators as well as operator ideals. Let L(X, Y ) be a Banach space of all bounded linear operator between Banach spaces X and Y , K(X, Y ) be the space of all compact operators, and W(X, Y ) be the space of all weakly compact operators. We denote space all operator ideals by O.

In this dissertation we study the structure of spaces of operators, especially the space of all compact operators between two Banach spaces X and Y. Work by Kalton, Emmanuele, Bator and Lewis on the space of compact and weakly compact operators motivates much of this paper. Let L(X,Y) be the Banach space of all bounded linear operators between Banach spaces X and Y, K(X,Y) be the space of all compact operators, and W(X,Y) be the space of all weakly compact operators. We study problems related to the complementability of different operator ideals (the Banach space of all compact, weakly compact, completely continuous, resp. unconditionally converging) operators in the space of all bounded linear operators. The structure of Dunford-Pettis sets, strong Dunford-Pettis sets, and certain spaces of operators is studied in the context of the injective and projective tensor products of Banach spaces. Bibasic sequences are used to study relative norm compactness of strong Dunford-Pettis sets. Next, we use Dunford-Pettis sets to give sufficient conditions for K(X,Y) to contain c0.

We prove quasisimilar subdecomposable operators without eigenvalues have equal essential spectra. Therefore, quasisimilar hyponormal operators have equal essential spectra. We obtain some results on the spectral pictures of cyclic hyponormal operators. An algebra homomorphism π from <i>H^∞(G)</i> to <i>L(H)</i> is a unital representation for <i>T</i> if <i>π(1) = I</i> and <i>π(x) = T</i>. It is shown that if the boundary of <i>G</i> has zero area measure, then the unital norm continuous representation for a pure hyponormal operator <i>T</i> is unique and is weak star continuous. It follows that every pure hyponormal contraction is in <i>C.₀</i> Let <i>μ</i> represent a positive, compactly supported Borel measure in the plane, <i>C</i>. For each <i>t</i> in [1, ∞ ), the space <i>P^t(μ)</i> consists of the functions in L^t(μ) that belong to the (norm) closure of the (analytic) polynomials. J. Thomson in [T] has shown that the set of bounded point evaluations, <i>bpe μ</i>, for <i>P^t(μ)</i> is a nonempty simply connected region <i>G</i>. We prove that the measure μ restricted to the boundary of <i>G</i> is absolutely continuous with respect to the harmonic measure on <i>G</i> and the space <i>P²(μ)∩C(spt μ) = A(G),</i> where <i>C(spt μ)</i> denotes the continuous functions on <i>spt μ</i> and <i>A(G)</i> denotes those functions continuous on <i>G &macr;</i> that are analytic on <i>G</i>. We also show that if a function <i>f</i> in <i>P²(μ)</i> is zero a.e. <i>μ</i> in a neighborhood of a point on the boundary, then <i>f</i> has to be the zero function. Using this result, we are able to prove that the essential spectrum of a cyclic, self-dual, subnormal operator is symmetric with respect to the real axis. We obtain a reduction into the structure of a cyclic, irreducible, self-dual, subnormal operator. One may assume, in this inquiry, that the corresponding <i>P²(μ)</i> space has <i>bpe μ = D</i>. Necessary and sufficient conditions for a cyclic, subnormal operator <i>S_μ</i> with <i>bpe μ = D</i> to have a self-dual are obtained under the additional assumption that the measure on the unit circle is log-integrable. / Ph. D.