Atualmente, diversos fatores tornam o setor das empresas prestadoras de serviços o mais importante da economia brasileira. Esse é o setor da economia que mais cresce e mais emprega trabalhadores. Ele representava em 2006, 85,8% das empresas do país, crescendo 34% durante o período compreendido entre os anos de 1999 a 2006. Realizou-se estudo de casos de natureza descritiva com dados primários e secundários, objetivando-se estudar a relação em termos de proximidade ou afastamento do sistema de controle de gestão de cinco empresas familiares prestadoras de serviços, com o plano referencial extraído da literatura pesquisada. O objetivo da pesquisa foi responder a seguinte questão: o sistema de controle gerencial das empresas pesquisadas possui relação de proximidade ou afastamento com os determinantes encontrados na literatura sobre o assunto? Os resultados demonstram que o sistema de controle gerencial das empresas pesquisadas, possui relação de proximidade com os determinantes encontrados na literatura sobre o assunto.

In this thesis, the design and use of ontologies as domain knowledge sources in information-providing dialogue systems are investigated. The research is divided into two parts, theoretical investigations that have resulted in a requirements specifications on the design of ontologies to be used in information-providing dialogue systems, and empirical work on the development of a framework for use of ontologies in information-providing dialogue systems. The framework includes three models: A model for ontology-based semantic analysis of questions. A model for ontology-based dialogue management, specifically focus management and clarifications. A model for ontology-based domain knowledge management, specifically transformation of user requests to system oriented concepts used for information retrieval. In this thesis, it is shown that using ontologies to represent and reason on domain knowledge in dialogue systems has several advantages. A deeper semantic analysis is possible in several modules and a more natural and efficient dialogue can be achieved. Another important aspect is that it facilitates portability; to be able to reuse adapt the dialogue system to new tasks and domains, since the domain-specific knowledge is separated form generic features in the dialogue system architecture. Other advantages are that it reduces the complexity of linguistic produced in various domains.

The work is analyzing strategies of a real service providing company doing business in the Czech Republic. It investigates its capability to deal with the changing environment and to face problems in its field - the entertainment industry. In order to see the company's future potential it looks deep into its individual strategies leading to reach the preset goals and examines in detail its main products. Also, it studies its relationship with employees, clients, suppliers and competition. Then, it weights its marketing tools to suggest the appropriate ones according to the chosen segment of its positionning.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Behrooz Mirafzal / Voltage source inverters (VSIs) are an essential interface for grid integration of renewable energy resources. Grid-tied VSIs are employed in power grids to integrate distributed generation units, e.g. photovoltaic arrays, wind turbines and energy storage units, to the utility and extract the maximum energy from the DG units in an efficient manner. However, the stability of VSIs and by extension the entire DG system can be degraded under abnormal grid conditions. In this dissertation, new control and switching techniques for stability and power quality improvement of grid-tied VSIs under abnormal grid conditions are presented. For grids with a low inertia and a low short-circuit ratio, commonly referred to as weak grids, grid connection may make VSIs susceptible to voltage distortion and instability. In this dissertation, through root locus analysis of a detailed state-space model, the design of several circuit and control parameters of the grid-tied VSI are evaluated for improving stability in weak grids. It is shown that grid-side filter inductances can be increased for stable operation of VSIs in weak grids. Accordingly, a virtual inductance emulating the effect of an increased inductance in the grid-side filter is developed in this dissertation, which enables stable operation of VSIs in weak grids without the tradeoffs, i.e. additional voltage drop, increased cost and larger size, associated with a larger inductor. The virtual inductance scheme is realized through the injection of a feedforward current element in the VSI controller through a gain component. The measured grid currents, which are sensed for regular VSI controller operation, are employed as the feedforward component eliminating the need for any additional sensors for the utilization of this control scheme. Furthermore, a direct model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme is employed in this dissertation to tune the virtual inductance gain block according to a stable reference model for varying grid conditions. The use of direct MRAC scheme allows tuning of the virtual inductance block without the need for a plant parameter estimation stage. The virtual inductance scheme enables stable operation of VSIs in weak grids without system parameter redesign, thereby maintaining the steady-state performance of the system. The efficacy of the virtual inductance feedforward scheme is verified through hardware tests carried out on a three-phase grid-tied experimental setup. Along with extracting energy from the DG sources, grid-tied VSIs are capable of providing various ancillary services to the utility under abnormal conditions. However, providing ancillary services could drive the inverter voltages beyond the linear modulation region resulting in grid current distortions, which could violate the requirements for grid integration of DGs. An atypical pulse width modulation (PWM) technique is proposed in this dissertation, which maximizes the dc-bus utilization of VSIs, which in turn enables the VSIs to supply the maximum extracted power from the DG units to the grid when providing ancillary services while operating in the linear modulation region. The switching scheme is realized by injecting common mode components in the PWM references, computed based on instantaneous reference magnitudes. The proposed scheme is suitable when providing both symmetrical and asymmetrical ancillary services. In this dissertation, negative-sequence compensation and harmonic compensation are employed as instances of symmetrical and asymmetrical ancillary services. The proposed scheme can be integrated with any control scheme and carrier-based PWM combinations. The efficacy of the proposed atypical PWM scheme is verified through both simulation and hardware tests.

With a rapidly growing lesbian and gay older adult population, it is important to understand the attitudes and perceptions held by older adult service providers. A questionnaire was distributed to San Bernardino County's Area Agency on Aging's service providers with the purpose of exploring and assessing their attitudes and perceptions toward lesbians and gay clients. The study consisted of a secondary data analysis with a total of 145 cases. Results indicated that African American participants reported the most positive perceptions of how current agency clients might react toward their lesbian and gay peers whereas Latino/a participants reported the least positive perceptions. Participants that identified themselves as volunteers or students reported the lowest levels of awareness of lesbian or gay clients as well as the lowest levels of comfort in working with this population. Older participants reported the least positive perceptions of how agency staff would react to lesbian and gay clients. With the exception of the aforementioned results, participants' awareness of lesbian and gay clients within the agency, their perceptions of how staff and other clients would treat this population and their comfort levels reveals a general lack of understanding of the needs of the older adult lesbian and gay population regardless of participant ethnicity, gender, role within the agency and age. Recommendations include ongoing cultural competency training, the inclusion of sexual orientation in the intake assessment process, ensuring a safe environment, and the development of services aimed at responding to the needs of lesbian and gay older adults.

Web services can be broadly classified into two types, namely effect providing (EP) services and data providing (DP) services. In this work, we address DP service composition problem that intends to satisfy user preference specified at the instance level, namely the expected occurrence. We first use the query rewriting method to identify a composition of service types that satisfies user¡¦s requirement and employ Bayesian Network model to express the causal relationship between exchange variables of DP service types. Service selection is then conducted by computing the posterior probability in the Bayesian Network. We conduct experiments to show that our proposed Bayesian Network-based method outperforms the other baseline methods in terms of execution success rate and data quality. It also has reasonable execution time.

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Bakgrund: Palliativ vård är en aktiv holistisk vård som utgår från den enskilde patientens livssituation. WHO definierar palliativ vård som ett förhållningssätt som syftar till att förbättra livskvaliteten för patienter och deras närstående som drabbats av livshotande sjukdom. Sjuksköterskans roll i denna vårdkontext kan beskrivas som relationsskapande, stödjande, kommunikativ och koordinerande. Patienten i palliativ vård befinner sig i en utsatt situation och dennes behov består i att upprätthålla god livskvalitet genom smärtlindring och existentiellt stöd. Denna situation ställer krav på sjuksköterskor att ständigt skapa och upprätthålla vårdrelationer med patienter som senare dör, vilket kan vara en utmaning för sjuksköterskan. Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva sjuksköterskors erfarenheter av att vårda patienter i palliativ vård. Metod: Litteraturöversikt baserad på åtta vetenskapliga kvalitativa artiklar hämtade från databaserna CINAHL och MEDLINE. Artiklarna har analyserats enligt Fribergs analysmetod. Benner och Wrubels omsorgsteori har använts som teoretisk utgångspunkt för att diskutera resultaten. Resultat: De erfarenheter av palliativt vårdarbete som sjuksköterskorna beskrev i denna litteraturöversikt fångas i fyra centrala teman; Sjuksköterskans relation till patient och dennes familj i palliativ vård, Hur palliativ vård påverkar sjuksköterskans egen person och liv, En vårdande inställning samt Utmaningar i det palliativa vårdarbetet. Diskussion: Resultatet ger en bild av ett komplext vårdområde där ett holistiskt förhållningssätt är nödvändigt. Sjuksköterskan följer med patient och närstående på en resa i livets slutskede som kräver närhet och påverkar hen emotionellt. Utmaningarna och de negativa aspekterna i vården uppvägs av stimulans, tacksamhet och strategier att bemästra de svåra situationerna. / Background: Palliative care is an active, holistic care which is based on the individual patient's life situation. WHO defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness. The role of the nurse in this context can be described as relationship-building, supporting, communicative and coordinating. The patient in a palliative care context is put in a vulnerable situation and is in need of maintaining a good quality of life through pain management and existential support. This situation puts demands on nurses to constantly create and maintain care relationships with patients whom will later die, which can be a challenge for the nurse. Aim: The aim was to describe nurses' experiences of caring for patients in palliative care. Method: Literature review based on eight scientific qualitative articles retrieved from the databases CINAHL and MEDLINE. The articles have been analysed according to Friberg's method of analysis. Benner and Wrubel's theory of caring has been used as a theoretical starting point to discuss the results. Results: The nurses' experiences of working in palliative care in this literature review were described in fourcentral themes; The nurse's relation to the patient and her family in palliative care, How palliative care affects the nurse's own person and life, A caring attitude and Challenges in the palliative nursing care. Discussions: The result shows a complex nursing field where a holistic approach is essential. The nurse follows the patient and family on a journey at the end of life which requires closeness and affects her emotionally. The challenges and the negative aspects are balanced by satisfaction, gratitude and strategies to cope with the difficult situations.

This diploma thesis deals with the question of Public Relations strategy planning for a company operating in the field of providing travel services. The objective of this thesis is to create such a strategy based on primary and secondary data we have gathered. When doing so we consider the key areas first on theoretical grounds, and then apply them into practice. The outcome of this work is a tailored propsal of Public Relations strategy for a particular business.

The work in this thesis addresses design and development of multimodal dialogue recommender systems for the home context-of-use. In the design part, two investigations on multimodal recommendation dialogue interaction in the home context are reported on. The first study gives implications for the design of dialogue system interaction including personalization and a three-entity multimodal interaction model accommodating dialogue feedback in order to make the interaction more efficient and successful. In the second study a dialogue corpus of movie recommendation dialogues is collected and analyzed, providing a characterization of such dialogues. We identify three initiative types that need to be addressed in a recommender dialogue system implementation: system-driven preference requests, userdriven information requests, and preference volunteering. Through the process of dialogue distilling, a dialogue control strategy covering system-driven preference requests from the corpus is arrived at. In the development part, an application-driven development process is adopted where reusable generic components evolve through the iterative and incremental refinement of dialogue systems. The Phase Graph Processor (PGP) design pattern is one such evolved component suggesting a phase-based control of dialogue systems. PGP is a generic and flexible micro architecture accommodating frequent change of requirements inherent of agile, evolutionary system development. As PGP has been used in a series of previous information-providing dialogue system projects, a standard phase graph has been established that covers the second initiative type; user-driven information requests. The phase graph is incrementally refined in order to provide user preference modeling, thus addressing the third initiative type, and multimodality as indicated by the user studies. In the iterative development of the multimodal recommender dialogue system MADFILM the phase graph is coupled with the dialogue control strategy in order to cater for the seamless integration of the three initiative types.