In this thesis I present prose works of contemporary Japanese women writers, who made their debut at the beginning of the 21st century. For a better understanding of the transition that a position of Japanese women and women authors has gone through - and how it prepared the way for their successors, I provide a summary of women's literature of the last two decades. To make the context clear, I also included an outline of significant changes within the realm of women's rights and the image of the role of women in society. Presentation of themes, that contemporary women writers focus on in their works and that reflect recent trends in modern Japanese society, follows. I also analyze aspects of language that are shared in works of young women writers. Lastly, considering the diverse range of critical reception of contemporary Japanese women writers, I would like to think about the future of Japanese modern literature. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The aim of this work is to explore recommender systems for prediction user's future film ratings according to their previous ratings. Author will describe available algorithms and compare their results with his own algorithm. The goal is to find algorithm with the highest prediction accuracy and find the most important parameters for a good predictions.

Title: Evolution of Prize Money for the 1st places in selected sports Objectives: The main aim of this Master Thesis is to analyse evolution of prize money for winners in selected competitions and disciplines of golf, tennis, athletics and figure skating and prognosis of their evolution until 2020. Another goal is to compare the results of this prognosis and try to determine what influences the evolution. Methods: Methods used for prognosis of the future evolution are prognostic functions FORECAST and LOGLINTREND. Quality of prognosis is based on the Theil Index of Inequality. Trendline is also used to determine future evolution of the data. The correct trendline is chosen based on its reliability value. Results: Result of this theses is the discovery that prize money in history was progressively growing especially in traditional tournaments in tennis and golf. In younger series of competitions in figure skating and athletics prize money remained constant within the years. Prognosis suggests further increase in prize money in Grand Slam and Major tournaments and stagnation in Diamond League and ISU Grand Prix. Keywords: prize money, prognosis, professional sport, golf, tennis, athletics, figure skating

Thesis advisor: Judith Wilt / Experience as an English major, a bookseller, a publishing intern, and a reader has formed questions in my mind about why people read what they do. My interest is focused in two particular "categories" of literature that vie for readers' attention: book clubs and literary awards. Because my skills are in literary interpretation and not societal or industrial analysis, I explored this supposed dichotomy by reading and comparing books from each category. In the "book club" books (My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards), I found a remarkable familial structure at the core: a daughter with a medical condition; a mother struggling to cope emotionally; a father who distances himself through work and offers profound symbolism via a hobby; an older brother who rebels; an outside couple, professionally involved in the action and romantically involved in each other. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winning books, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, stretch farther with voice, style, and imagery. I found them intellectually and personally more satisfying. In addition pursuing academic interests, I also grew to better understand the variety of purposes for which we read. Though I concluded that if all four novels were to be labeled, they should simply be named "middlebrow," I came to appreciate different writers' strengths — research, personal experience, mastery of language — even when they do not match my personal criteria as a reader. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Neste projeto estudamos algoritmos de aproximação para o problema da árvore de Steiner com coleta de prêmios. Trata-se de uma generalização do problema da árvore de Steiner, onde é dado um grafo com custos positivos nas arestas e penalidades positivas nos vértices. O objetivo é encontrar uma subárvore do grafo que minimize a soma dos custos das arestas mais a soma das penalidades dos vértices que não pertencem à subárvore. Em 2009, os autores Archer, Bateni, Hajiaghayi e Karloff obtiveram pela primeira vez um algoritmo com fator de aproximação estritamente menor do que 2. Além de analisarmos este algoritmo, estudamos também a implementação de algoritmos 2-aproximação para o problema da árvore de Steiner e da árvore de Steiner com coleta de prêmios. / In this project we analyze approximation algorithms for the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem. This is a generalization of the Steiner tree problem, in which it is given a graph with positive costs in edges and positive penalties in vertices. The goal is to find a subtree of the graph that minimizes the sum of costs of edges plus the sum of the penalties of the vertices that don\'t belong to the subtree. In 2009, the authors Archer, Bateni, Hajiaghayi e Karloff described, for the first time an algorithm with approximation factor strictly less than 2. Besides analyzing this algorithm, we also study the implementation of 2-approximation algorithms to the Steiner tree problem and prize-collecting Steiner tree problem.

No description available.

Nonlinear prize money structures are used in professional golf tournaments in order to induce competitors to exert a maximum level of effort. While there has been a growing amount of literature using professional golf data to test tournament theory’s basic prediction that increasing prize levels results in an increase in player effort level, no consistent narrative has emerged. Furthermore, in 2007, the PGA Tour introduced the FedExCup system, which significantly altered the ranking and prize money structure of professional golf. This paper incorporates data from the 2011 PGA tour season to analyze whether or not the introduction of the FedExCup has led to increased effort level on the part of competitors, as predicted by tournament theory. The results negate the predictions of tournament theory and suggest that an increase in tournament prize money is associated with a corresponding increase in player scores over the course of the tournament. However, these findings can be explained by examining the dramatic increase in PGA Tour prize money levels over the last two and a half decades, which has induced golfers to decrease their average level of effort.

Iterative rounding has been an increasingly popular approach to solving network design optimization problems ever since Jain introduced the concept in his revolutionary 2-approximation for the Survivable Network Design Problem (SNDP). This paper looks at several important iterative rounding approximation algorithms and makes improvements to some of their proofs. We generalize a matrix restatement of Nagarajan et al.'s token argument, which we can use to simplify the proofs of Jain's 2-approximation for SNDP and Fleischer et al.'s 2-approximation for the Element Connectivity (ELC) problem. Lau et al. show how one can construct a (2,2B + 3)-approximation for the degree bounded ELC problem, and this thesis provides the proof. We provide some structural results for basic feasible solutions of the Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree problem, and introduce a new problem that arises, which we call the Prize-Collecting Generalized Steiner Tree problem.

In the process of economic developments in Taiwan, small and medium enterprises are always the main stable force and have made remarkable contributions. Based on this fact, The National Award of Small and Medium Enterprises was set up for upgrading and rewarding outstanding small and medium enterprises. To apply for the award firms need to pass substantially high qualifications. Therefore, if an enterprise won the award, they were recognized as successful. However, according to recent newspapers and magazines, some winners are now facing restructuring, the failure of the public offerings, or even bankruptcy. What happened to these enterprises that used to be good at the beginning? Why can¡¦t they sustain original advantages and remain successful? The subject of this research focuses on ¡§main reasons for business failure¡¨ and picks up the winners of the National Award of Small and Medium Enterprises for examples. Hopefully through the research, we can conclude the main reason for business failure. By gathering and analyzing the second informations, we have eight findings¡G Finding 1¡BThe ¡§business cycle¡¨ is often an important reason for the business failure. Small and medium businesses are most easily affected by the variation of outside environment. Finding 2¡BThe deviating personality of the managers determines whether the enterprise enjoys excellent operations or collapses in a twinkling. Finding 3¡BMost enterprises make use of "the backdoor listing"," the cross holdings" to steer high financial leverage and to collect a great deal of short-term capital which leads to financial crisis. Finding 4¡BThe operation of the corporation is not efficient, neglecting the real market demand, as a result being eliminated in the competition. Finding 5¡BThe most common feature of the corporations going down in the 70¡¦s is high quoted loans among IPO companies. Their debt ratio overweighs, and the core business occurs severe loss in business. Finding 6¡BThe strong stockholder combines the outside power to create soaring stock price. In the end it leads to misfortune. Finding 7¡BIf managers don't know how to handle their assets suitably, the more they have, the easier they squander. Finding 8¡BThe development of the industry faces the bottleneck and knows not where to go.

No description available.