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Cell formation has received much attention from academicians and practitioners because of its strategic importance to modern manufacturing practices. Existing research on cell formation problems using integer programming (IP) has achieved the target of solving problems that simultaneously optimise machine-cell allocation and partmachine allocation. This thesis presents extensions of an IP model where part-machine assignment and cell formation are addressed simultaneously, and integration of inter-cell movements of parts and machine set-up costs within the objective function is taking place together with the inclusion of an ordered part machine operation sequence. The latter is identified as a neglected parameter for the Cell Formation problem. Due to the nature of the mathematical IP modelling for Cell Formation two main drawbacks can be identified: (a) Cell Formation is considered to be a complex and difficult combinatorial optimisation problem or in other words NP-hard (Non-deterministic Polynomial time hard) problem and (b) because of the deterministic nature of mathematical programming the decision maker is required to specify precisely goals and constraints. The thesis describes a comprehensive study of the cell formation problem where fuzzy set theory is employed for measuring uncertainty. Membership functions are used to express linguistically the uncertainty involved and aggregation operators are employed to transform the fuzzy models into mathematical programming models. The core of the research concentrates on the investigation and development of heuristic and . metaheuristic approaches. A three stage randomly generated heuristic approach for producing an efficient initial solution for the CF together with an iterative heuristic are first developed. Numerous data sets are employed which prove their effectiveness. Moreover, an iterative tabu search algorithm is implemented where the initial solution fed in is the same as that used in the descent heuristic. The first iterative procedure and the tabu search algorithm are compared and the results produced show the superiority of the latter over the former in stability, computational times and clustering results.

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In this paper, we experiment with using Stagger, an open-source implementation of an Averaged Perceptron tagger, to tag Icelandic, a morphologically complex language. By adding languagespecific linguistic features and using IceMorphy, an unknown word guesser, we obtain state-of- the-art tagging accuracy of 92.82%. Furthermore, by adding data from a morphological database, and word embeddings induced from an unannotated corpus, the accuracy increases to 93.84%. This is equivalent to an error reduction of 5.5%, compared to the previously best tagger for Icelandic, consisting of linguistic rules and a Hidden Markov Model.

Remittances significantly affect recipient households’ behavior. Using data from the Jamaican Survey of Living Conditions and the Jamaican Labor Force Survey ( 2001-2007), this dissertation explores the effects of remittances on labor market participation and household expenditures. Jamaica’s proximity to the United States and its diaspora of educated individuals shapes an economy largely dependent on remittances, thus providing an interesting case study. First, we investigate whether remittances alter labor market behavior of married women in remittance-receiving households located in Jamaica. Remittances, the wife’s education, and wages are all treated as endogenous when estimating labor market participation and hours worked. Unlike other studies, we find that after instrumenting for remittances, the outside income has no significant effect on the supply of labor. Second, we assess the extent that remittances alter the consumption pattern of recipient households in Jamaica. Classical theory predicts that total income affects household consumption decisions, but developments in behavioral economics suggest otherwise. The disaggregation of income streams and consumption expenditures provide us with unique insight into household behavior and in particular, spending on items such as food, schooling, and vices. Using Engel curve estimation and the two-part fractional response models, we find that the source of income significantly affects the shares of income spent in specific consumption categories. Recipients, for example, generally spend more of their income on schooling and home production and less at the grocery store. These findings suggest important implications should government look to tax or restrict the flow of remittances.

This research mainly discusses the relationship among the hours of work, specific industries, laws and regulations. We hope that the government and firms can understand the status of current hours of work so that it can be the references for them to adopt flexible human resources strategies. The questionnaire survey was adopted for the study. The samples are the experts of human resources. Totally, 350 questionnaires were distributed, and 120 of them are valid samples. Through statistical analysis, the main results of the study could be summarized in the following two parts: 1. There were some significant correlations between the hours of work and industry:¡]1¡^the hours of work of altering work schedule was positively and significantly related to different industry.¡]2¡^The hours of work a week and the pay for overtime were positively and significantly related to different industry.¡]3¡^Part-time schedule may calculate their overtime earlier than other schedules. The altering work schedule needs to report in for duty are more common than other jobs. ¡]4¡^The vacation and leave policy were significantly associated with different industry. 2. Some significant differences between hours of work and laws and regulations were found.¡]1¡^Some of firms¡¦ hours of work are better than mandatory. For example, the hours of work a week, vacation and leave policy.¡]2¡^Some of firms¡¦ hours of work are worse than mandatory. For example, the hours of work a week, vacation, leave, overtime policy.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 76 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-53).

Thesis (D. Ed.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis--Florida State University. / Vol. 2 consists of the author's transcription of Morley's Canzonets; or Little short songs to fovre voyces (London, 1597) and his Madrigals to fiue voyces (London, 1598) The score includes reduction of the voice parts for piano. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography.