Over the last 30 years there has been a paradigmatic shift in the field of disabilities towards assessing individual support needs in relation to social and environmental context rather than individual deficits. The capacity of existing assessment instruments to assess support needs is limited because most were designed to assess individual deficits and thereby determine eligibility for funding and/or services. Some instruments have been designed to assess support needs but there are several problems associated with these instruments including, suitability for use in only one disability type, susceptibility to rater bias, and failure to account for variations in support needs over time. This thesis attempted to contribute to addressing these deficiencies by examining the characteristics that are most predictive of support needs for people with psychiatric and intellectual disabilities and the methods by which changes in such support needs could be predicted. Two studies were used to address these aims. The first considered samples of people with primary psychiatric disabilities (N= 561) and intellectual disabilities (N =168), who lived in Supported Residential Facilities. These participants were assessed in regards not only to standard demographic and disability characteristics, and also personal characteristics, including functional abilities, and support needs. The data were analysed using ordinal logistic regression to determine which better predicted support needs and, accordingly, which characteristics were most important to include in the assessment of support needs. Analysis showed that personal characteristics, such as functional abilities such as showering/bathing and budgeting explained much more variance in support needs than either demographics or disability characteristics. This suggests that, for support needs assessments to be accurately assessed, they should include evaluations of these personal characteristics even though they may require more time and resources to obtain than demographic and disability data. The second study in this thesis aimed to investigate whether caregivers could predict changes in support needs over six-month periods accurately. Residents in supported accommodation with a primary psychiatric disability (N = 60; although some attrition among those with psychiatric disabilities), or primary intellectual disability (N = 57) and their caregivers were involved in this study. Caregivers were interviewed on three occasions at six-monthly intervals and asked to estimate any changes that they expected to occur in the next six months or that they believed had occurred in the preceding six months. Caregivers were also asked to complete two functional assessments for each resident at the three points in time. The functional assessments were used as the benchmark against which the accuracy of caregivers’ estimates was examined. Analysis found that caregivers were unable to predict accurately prospective changes in overall or specific support needs, nor were they able to report accurately such changes retrospectively. The results of this thesis contribute to the body of knowledge in the relatively new area of support needs assessment in terms of possible predictors of support needs and the assessment of changes in support needs. Recommendations for further research include; investigating some of the personal characteristics found to be predictors of support needs in greater detail and among other disability types, replication of these findings in other samples, and investigating ways to improve caregivers’ capacity to predict changes in support needs accurately. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2008

Over the last 30 years there has been a paradigmatic shift in the field of disabilities towards assessing individual support needs in relation to social and environmental context rather than individual deficits. The capacity of existing assessment instruments to assess support needs is limited because most were designed to assess individual deficits and thereby determine eligibility for funding and/or services. Some instruments have been designed to assess support needs but there are several problems associated with these instruments including, suitability for use in only one disability type, susceptibility to rater bias, and failure to account for variations in support needs over time. This thesis attempted to contribute to addressing these deficiencies by examining the characteristics that are most predictive of support needs for people with psychiatric and intellectual disabilities and the methods by which changes in such support needs could be predicted. Two studies were used to address these aims. The first considered samples of people with primary psychiatric disabilities (N= 561) and intellectual disabilities (N =168), who lived in Supported Residential Facilities. These participants were assessed in regards not only to standard demographic and disability characteristics, and also personal characteristics, including functional abilities, and support needs. The data were analysed using ordinal logistic regression to determine which better predicted support needs and, accordingly, which characteristics were most important to include in the assessment of support needs. Analysis showed that personal characteristics, such as functional abilities such as showering/bathing and budgeting explained much more variance in support needs than either demographics or disability characteristics. This suggests that, for support needs assessments to be accurately assessed, they should include evaluations of these personal characteristics even though they may require more time and resources to obtain than demographic and disability data. The second study in this thesis aimed to investigate whether caregivers could predict changes in support needs over six-month periods accurately. Residents in supported accommodation with a primary psychiatric disability (N = 60; although some attrition among those with psychiatric disabilities), or primary intellectual disability (N = 57) and their caregivers were involved in this study. Caregivers were interviewed on three occasions at six-monthly intervals and asked to estimate any changes that they expected to occur in the next six months or that they believed had occurred in the preceding six months. Caregivers were also asked to complete two functional assessments for each resident at the three points in time. The functional assessments were used as the benchmark against which the accuracy of caregivers’ estimates was examined. Analysis found that caregivers were unable to predict accurately prospective changes in overall or specific support needs, nor were they able to report accurately such changes retrospectively. The results of this thesis contribute to the body of knowledge in the relatively new area of support needs assessment in terms of possible predictors of support needs and the assessment of changes in support needs. Recommendations for further research include; investigating some of the personal characteristics found to be predictors of support needs in greater detail and among other disability types, replication of these findings in other samples, and investigating ways to improve caregivers’ capacity to predict changes in support needs accurately. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2008

Orientador: Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, Charlles Rubber de Almeida Abreu / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia de Alimentos / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T20:08:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hirata_GlauciadeFreitas_M.pdf: 4160128 bytes, checksum: 9b62997885094931827adf8fd70b8a25 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Na indústria de óleos, a remoção dos ácidos graxos livres é a etapa mais importante do processo de purificação. Geralmente, é realizada pelo refino químico ou físico. Em alguns casos, no entanto, o refino convencional provoca resultados indesejáveis. A desacidificação por extração líquido-líquido tem se mostrado uma alternativa viável tecnicamente. Nos estudos realizados, os dados de equilíbrio são determinados e modelados para cada tipo de óleo isoladamente, resultando em modelos que são específicos para cada óleo. No entanto, para obter uma ferramenta preditiva, é necessário considerar as verdadeiras composições presentes nas misturas para que se consiga distinguir o comportamento de cada tipo de sistema de forma satisfatória. Neste trabalho, os dados existentes na literatura foram usados para reajustar os parâmetros de interação entre grupos do método UNIFAC. Isto é necessário porque os parâmetros originais do UNIFAC-LLE não predizem bem o comportamento desse tipo de sistema. Para reajustar estes parâmetros, os sistemas foram modelados considerando sua complexidade. Entretanto, para conseguir comparar com os dados experimentais, as misturas foram consideradas pseudoternárias e pseudoquaternárias (como estão disponíveis os dados experimentais). Uma nova divisão também foi proposto para simplificar a descrição do pseudocomponente óleo. No caso, cada resíduo de ácido graxo (juntamente com "um terço" do resíduo de glicerol) que se liga para formar as moléculas de triacilglicerol foram considerados como componentes independentes, negligenciando sua real conectividade. Isto é útil, pois reduz consideravelmente o número de componentes do pseudocomponente óleo. Para isso, um grupo adicional foi criado (-COOCH5/3). Os desvios encontrados usando os grupos e os parâmetros originais de UNIFAC-LLE foram consideravelmente maiores do que os desvios encontrados para os outros dois casos (parâmetros reestimados e nova divisão), o que demonstra a melhora no poder preditivo do método UNIFAC. Foram determinados dois sistemas de validação, um com óleo de palma e o outro com uma mistura de óleos de babaçu, palma e soja, em que se pode constatar a melhora no poder preditivo, tanto usando os parâmetros originais reajustados como usando os parâmetros ajustados com a nova divisão, quando comparado com os parâmetros originais do UNIFAC-LLE. Este estudo possibilitou a organização dos dados de equilíbrio líquido-líquido para a desacidificação de óleos disponíveis na literatura e, ampliou a possibilidade de uso de tais dados no desenvolvimento e otimização de processos na indústria de óleos vegetais e seus derivados / Abstract: In the industry of oils, the removal of free fatty acids is the most important stage of the purification procedure. It is usually performed by chemical or physical refining. In some cases, however, the conventional refining causes undesirable results. The deacidification by liquid-liquid extraction has proved a viable alternative technically. In the studies carried out, the data regarding equilibrium are determined and modeled for each type of oil alone, resulting in models that are specific for each oil. However, to obtain a predictive tool, it is necessary to consider the true compositions present in the mixtures so that it could distinguish the behavior of each type of system satisfactorily. In this work, the existing data in the literature were used to recalculate group interaction parameters of the UNIFAC method. This is necessary because the original parameters of UNIFAC-LLE do not yield predictions with enough accuracy. To adjust these parameters, the systems were modeled considering its complexity, however, in order to compare with experimental data, the compositions were reduced to pseudo ternary and pseudo quaternary (as are available the experimental data). New groups have also been proposed to simplify the description of the oil pseudocomponent. In this case, each fatty acid residue (together with ¿one third¿ of a glycerol residue) that connects to form the triacylglycerol molecules are considered as independent components, regardless of the true connectivity. This is useful because it reduces the number of components of the oil pseudocomponent. For this, an additional group was created (-COOCH5/3). The derivation found using the original groups and parameters of UNIFAC-LLE was considerably higher than the deviations found in both other cases(adjusted original parameters and new division), showing that the predictive power of the UNIFAC method was improved for this type of system. Two validation systems were made: one with palm oil and the other one with a mixture of babassu oil, palm and soya, where you can see the improvement in predictive power, either using the adjusted original parameters or using the parameters adjusted to the new division, when compared to the original parameters. Thus, this study enabled the organization of the data set of liquid-liquid equilibrium for deacidification of oils available in the literature and extended the use of such data in the development and optimization of procedures in the industry of vegetable oil and its derivatives / Mestrado / Engenharia de Alimentos / Mestre em Engenharia de Alimentos

A determinação do tempo de vida útil dos alimentos é importante, pois garante que estes estejam adequados para o consumo se ingeridos dentro do período estipulado. Os alimentos que apresentam vida curta têm seu tempo de vida útil determinado por estudos não acelerados, os quais demandam métodos multivariados de análise para uma boa predição. Considerando isso, este estudo objetiva: propor um método estatístico multivariado capaz de predizer o tempo de vida útil de alimentos, em estudos não acerados; avaliar sua estabilidade e sensibilidade frente a perturbações provocadas nas variáveis de entrada, utilizando técnicas de simulação bootstrap; apresentar o método SheNon para dados experimentais por meio da construção de contrastes dos tempos preditos dos tratamentos de interesse e compará-los com uma diferença mínima significativa (DMS) obtida empiricamente por meio do método bootstrap. Com os resultados provenientes deste estudo constatou-se que o método proposto mostra-se promissor e estável para a predição do tempo de vida útil de alimentos em estudos não acelerados. O método mostrou-se sensível ao número de tempos (tamanho da amostra) em que o alimento foi observado. Verificou-se, também, bom desempenho na análise de dados experimentais, uma vez que após predição do tempo de vida útil para cada tratamento considerado, pode-se inferir sobre a igualdade dos tempos de vida de diferentes tratamentos. / Consumers are increasingly demanding about the quality of food and expectation that this quality is maintained at high level during the period between purchase and consumption. These expectations are a consequence not only of the requirement that the food should stay safe, but also the need to minimize the unwanted changes in their sensory qualities. Considering food safety and consumer demands this study aims to propose a multivariate statistical method to predict the shelf life of time not accelerated studies, the method SheNon. The development of multivariate method for predicting the shelf life of a food, considering all attributes and their natures describes a new concept of data analysis for estimating the degradation mechanisms that govern food and determines the time period in which these foods retain their characteristics within acceptable levels. The proposed method allows to include microbiological, physical, chemical and sensory attributes, which leads to a more accurate prediction of shelf life of food. The method SheNon features easy interpretation, its main advantages include the ability to combine information from different natures and can be generalized to data with experimental structure. The method SheNon was applied to eggplants minimally processed predicting a lifetime of around 9.6 days.

There are many aspects to consider when managing an entire supply chain from procurement to fulfillment. Complex assemblies require hundreds of components, sourced from all corners of the globe, to come together in a synchronized fashion. Given the magnitude of the supply chain, high quality standards, and significantly increased outsourcing, there is a strong need to monitor supplier risk and quickly identify and mitigate potential problems. Moreover, the continuous pressure to reduce resources and pressure to cut costs, further increases the need for the development of procedures and tools that can quickly and efficiently address these potential supply chain risks. This thesis focuses on two unique problems brought to our attention by supply chain managers in the field. The first is the analysis of the robustness of advanced ordering strategies (AOS). AOS have been proposed in previous research to coordinate the delivery of components for complex assemblies with long and highly variable lead times. They have been shown to be highly successful to synchronize the supply chain under on-going conditions. It is not clear; however, their effect as the underlying performance of suppliers evolves over time. The second topic covers the methodological foundation and development of a tool to accurately classify suppliers based off risk, and provides a method to calculate final assembly risk, in addition to guiding the deployment of scarce supplier development teams and resources.

Background. Maintainability of software products continues to be an area of im- portance and interest both for practice and research. The time used for maintenance usually exceeds 70% of the whole period of software development process. At present, there is a large number of metrics that have been suggested to indicate the main- tainability of a software product. However, there is a gap in validation of proposed source code metrics and the external quality of software maintainability. Objectives. In this thesis, we aim to catalog the proposed metrics for software maintainability. From this catalog we will validate a subset of commonly proposed maintainability indicators. Methods. Through a literature review with a systematic search and selection ap- proach, we collated maintainability metrics from secondary studies on software main- tainability. A subset of commonly metrics identified in the literature review were validated in a retrospective study. The retrospective study used a large open source software "Elastic Search" as a case. We collected internal source code metrics and a proxy for maintainability of the system for 911 bug fixes in 14 version (11 experi- mental samples, 3 are verification samples) of the product. Results. Following a systematic search and selection process, we identified 11 sec- ondary studies on software maintainability. From these studies we identified 290 source code metrics that are claimed to be indicators of the maintainability of a soft- ware product. We used mean time to repair (MTTR) as a proxy for maintainability of a product. Our analysis reveals that for the "elasticsearch" software, the values of the four indicators LOC, CC, WMC and RFC have the strongest correlation with MTTR. Conclusions. In this thesis, we validated a subset of commonly proposed source code metrics for predicting maintainability. The empirical validation using a popu- lar large-scale open source system reveals that some metrics have shown a stronger correlation with a proxy for maintainability in use. This study provides important empirical evidence towards a better understanding of source code attributes and maintainability in practice. However, a single case and a retrospective study are insufficient to establish a cause effect relation. Therefore, further replications of our study design with more diverse cases can increase the confidence in the predictive ability and thus the usefulness of the proposed metrics.

Being able to predict the outcome of a game is useful in many aspects. Such as,to aid designers in the process of understanding how the game is played by theplayers, as well as how to be able to balance the elements within the game aretwo of those aspects. If one could predict the outcome of games with certaintythe design process could possibly be evolved into more of an experiment basedapproach where one can observe cause and effect to some degree. It has previouslybeen shown that it is possible to predict outcomes of games to varying degrees ofsuccess. However, there is a lack of research which compares and evaluates severaldifferent models on the same domain with common aims. To narrow this identifiedgap an experiment is conducted to compare and analyze seven different classifierswithin the same domain. The classifiers are then ranked on accuracy against eachother with help of appropriate statistical methods. The classifiers compete onthe task of predicting which team will win or lose in a match of the game BloodBowl 2. For nuance three different datasets are made for the models to be trainedon. While the results vary between the models of the various datasets the general consensus has an identifiable pattern of rejections. The results also indicatea strong accuracy for Support Vector Machine and Logistic Regression across allthe datasets.

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To optimize biodiesel manufacturing, many reported studies have built simulation models to quantify the relationship between operating conditions and process performance. For mass and energy balance simulations, it is essential to know the four fundamental thermophysical properties of the feed oil: liquid density (Ï L), vapor pressure (Pvap), liquid heat capacity (CpL), and heat of vaporization (Î Hvap). Additionally, to characterize the fuel qualities, it is critical to develop quantitative correlations to predict three biodiesel properties, namely, viscosity, cetane number, and flash point. Also, to ensure the operability of biodiesel in cold weather, one needs to quantitatively predict three low-temperature flow properties: cloud point (CP), pour point (PP), and cold filter plugging point (CFPP). This article presents the results from a comprehensive evaluation of the methods for predicting these four essential feed oil properties and six key biodiesel fuel properties. We compare the predictions to reported experimental data and recommend the appropriate prediction methods for each property based on accuracy, consistency, and generality. Of particular significance are (1) our presentation of simple and accurate methods for predicting the six key fuel properties based on the number of carbon atoms and the number of double bonds or the composition of total unsaturated fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) and (2) our posting of the Excel spreadsheets for implementing all of the evaluated accurate prediction methods on our group website (www.design.che.vt.edu) for the reader to download without charge. / Master of Science