<div>Prescribed fire is one of the most useful tools available to forest managers attempting to maintain oak-hickory forests in the Central Hardwood Region. Prescribed fire can be useful in promoting regeneration of desirable species groups like oak (Quercus spp.) and hickory (Carya spp.) by preparing the seedbed, managing competition, and creating canopy gaps. The use of prescribed fire has been limited by concerns regarding the effect of the practice on standing timber. A perception of strong negative effects to tree-quality and tree-value from fire originated largely from sometimes deleterious effects of wildfire on timber. Less research exists demonstrating the potential effects of controlled, prescribed burning on timber quality and value. Furthermore, most research that exists focuses on individual tree characteristics, and is often focused on a relatively small geographic areas.</div><div><br></div><div>I conducted a regional study on the effects of prescribed fire on timber quality across a gradient of the Central Hardwood Region, ranging from the Missouri Ozarks to the Appalachian foothills. I studied 139 stands in selected prescribed fire units and control sites in Mark Twain National Forest (MO), Hoosier National Forest (IN), Wayne National Forest (OH) and Daniel Boone National Forest (KY). Selected stands were dominated by hardwoods species and had variable prescribed fire histories, ranging from 0 to 6 prescribed fires. </div><div><br></div><div>Measurements were taken concurrently across this plot network for two studies. First, we assessed the estimated effect of prescribed fire on stumpage value, and secondly, we assessed wounding patterns and effects of prescribed fire on tree-quality. Loss in estimated stumpage value from prescribed fire averaged approximately 4.2% across all measured stands. Estimated loss in stumpage value varied significantly by the number of prescribed fires in the last 30 years, with increasing numbers of prescribed fires leading to higher estimated losses in stumpage value. Further, stands in Mark Twain National Forest exhibited higher estimated loss in stumpage value, exceeding 10% on average. Stands in Hoosier, Wayne, and Daniel Boone National Forest only rarely exceed 5% losses in estimated stumpage value, and averaged less than 3%. </div><div><br></div><div>Approximately 25% of trees had at least one wound associated with prescribed fire across all study sites, while approximately 5% of trees experienced a reduction in tree quality (as measured by United States Forest Service tree grade) from prescribed fire. Both the rate of wounding and rate of tree grade reduction increased with increasing numbers of prescribed fires. Stands in the western portion of the Central Hardwood Region (Hoosier and Mark Twain National Forest) exhibiting higher rates of wounding from fire compared to eastern sites (Wayne and Daniel Boone National Forest.)</div><div><br></div><div>Effects of wounding varied significantly by type of wound. Catfaces accounted for far more volume loss and reduction in tree grade than any other wound type. Alternatively, some wound types, like seams and bark slough, caused minimal tree-quality and tree-volume effects. Effects also varied by species, with higher wounding effects on sugar maple and red oak, and relatively low effects on white oak and yellow-poplar. </div><div><br></div>

<p>This thesis assesses some indicators of quality for maternity care in Tanzania, using antenatal management of anaemia and hypertension and emergency obstetric care as focal points. The care of pregnant women consecutively enrolled in antenatal care (n=379) was observed and compared with quality standard criteria. From a tertiary level labour ward 741 cases of eclampsia were identified and their antenatal care analyzed. A health systems analysis was performed for 205 cases of pregnancy complications at district level.</p><p>There was inadequate equipment and drugs, inadequate staff knowledge and motivation, and incorrect measurements for investigating anaemia and hypertension in pregnancy. Hospital incidence of eclampsia at tertiary level was 200/10,000 live births, and was not modified by antenatal care. The quality observed in the antenatal programme indicated little impact on either anaemia or hypertensive complications. Compliance with obstetric referral was only 46% and all four observed maternal deaths occurred due to transport problems. The proposed process indicators for essential obstetric care were inadequate to assess the quality of care on a district level. </p><p>There is a need to address structural weaknesses, to motivate health workers and to improve training on quality improvement. More research is warranted on indicators for obstetric needs, accessibility and referral system.</p>

This thesis assesses some indicators of quality for maternity care in Tanzania, using antenatal management of anaemia and hypertension and emergency obstetric care as focal points. The care of pregnant women consecutively enrolled in antenatal care (n=379) was observed and compared with quality standard criteria. From a tertiary level labour ward 741 cases of eclampsia were identified and their antenatal care analyzed. A health systems analysis was performed for 205 cases of pregnancy complications at district level. There was inadequate equipment and drugs, inadequate staff knowledge and motivation, and incorrect measurements for investigating anaemia and hypertension in pregnancy. Hospital incidence of eclampsia at tertiary level was 200/10,000 live births, and was not modified by antenatal care. The quality observed in the antenatal programme indicated little impact on either anaemia or hypertensive complications. Compliance with obstetric referral was only 46% and all four observed maternal deaths occurred due to transport problems. The proposed process indicators for essential obstetric care were inadequate to assess the quality of care on a district level. There is a need to address structural weaknesses, to motivate health workers and to improve training on quality improvement. More research is warranted on indicators for obstetric needs, accessibility and referral system.

Mapping between many different applications and many different underlying technologies is very complicated. Moreover, since users need service continuity and want to get the service in a satisfactory level, firstly, their perception of the service should be measured and secondly, the changes in the underlying technologies should be transparent to users. As a result, there should be ”virtualization layer” between application layer and underlying access technologies whose job is to abstract user perception of the application in terms of network parameters and transfer these requirements to underlying layers. In this thesis, we propose a generic mathematical expression to abstract user perception of application in a unified way for different applications. Since today applications are composite applications, having a generalized expression that has the same form for various applications can ease resource management calculations. We use application service map which is based on quality of experience for resource management.

Mapping between many different applications and many different underlying technologies is very complicated. Moreover, since users need service continuity and want to get the service in a satisfactory level, firstly, their perception of the service should be measured and secondly, the changes in the underlying technologies should be transparent to users. As a result, there should be ”virtualization layer” between application layer and underlying access technologies whose job is to abstract user perception of the application in terms of network parameters and transfer these requirements to underlying layers. In this thesis, we propose a generic mathematical expression to abstract user perception of application in a unified way for different applications. Since today applications are composite applications, having a generalized expression that has the same form for various applications can ease resource management calculations. We use application service map which is based on quality of experience for resource management.

As the requirements for software systems increase, their size, complexity and functionality consequently increases as well. This has a direct impact on the complexity of numerous artifacts related to the system such as specification, design, implementation and, testing models. Furthermore, as the software market becomes more and more competitive, the need for software products that are of high quality and require the least monetary, time and human resources for their development and maintenance becomes evident. Therefore, it is important that project managers and software engineers are given the necessary tools to obtain a more holistic and accurate perspective of the status of their projects in order to early identify potential risks, flaws, and quality issues that may arise during each stage of the software project life cycle. In this respect, practitioners and academics alike have recognized the significance of investigating new methods for supporting software management operations with respect to large software projects. The main target of this M.A.Sc. thesis is the design of a framework in terms of, first, a reference architecture for mining and analyzing of software project data repositories according to specific objectives and analytic knowledge, second, the techniques to model such analytic knowledge and, third, a reasoning methodology for verifying or denying hypotheses related to analysis objectives. Such a framework could assist project managers, team leaders and development teams towards more accurate prediction of project traits such as quality analysis, risk assessment, cost estimation and progress evaluation. More specifically, the framework utilizes goal models to specify analysis objectives as well as, possible ways by which these objectives can be achieved. Examples of such analysis objectives for a project could be to yield, high code quality, achieve low production cost or, cope with tight delivery deadlines. Such goal models are consequently transformed into collections of Markov Logic Network rules which are then applied to the repository data in order to verify or deny with a degree of probability, whether the particular project objectives can be met as the project evolves. The proposed framework has been applied, as a proof of concept, on a repository pertaining to three industrial projects with more that one hundred development tasks.

Since its introduction in 2004, the Structural Similarity (SSIM) index has gained widespread popularity as an image quality assessment measure. SSIM is currently recognized to be one of the most powerful methods of assessing the visual closeness of images. That being said, the Mean Squared Error (MSE), which performs very poorly from a perceptual point of view, still remains the most common optimization criterion in image processing applications because of its relative simplicity along with a number of other properties that are deemed important. In this thesis, some necessary tools to assist in the design of SSIM-optimal algorithms are developed. This work combines theoretical developments with experimental research and practical algorithms. The description of the mathematical properties of the SSIM index represents the principal theoretical achievement in this thesis. Indeed, it is demonstrated how the SSIM index can be transformed into a distance metric. Local convexity, quasi-convexity, symmetries and invariance properties are also proved. The study of the SSIM index is also generalized to a family of metrics called normalized (or M-relative) metrics. Various analytical techniques for different kinds of SSIM-based optimization are then devised. For example, the best approximation according to the SSIM is described for orthogonal and redundant basis sets. SSIM-geodesic paths with arclength parameterization are also traced between images. Finally, formulas for SSIM-optimal point estimators are obtained. On the experimental side of the research, the structural self-similarity of images is studied. This leads to the confirmation of the hypothesis that the main source of self-similarity of images lies in their regions of low variance. On the practical side, an implementation of local statistical tests on the image residual is proposed for the assessment of denoised images. Also, heuristic estimations of the SSIM index and the MSE are developed. The research performed in this thesis should lead to the development of state-of-the-art image denoising algorithms. A better comprehension of the mathematical properties of the SSIM index represents another step toward the replacement of the MSE with SSIM in image processing applications.

Nowadays, almost all organizations use information technologies (IT) in some extent that they have gained many advantages from it. However, the wrong management of IT processes may cause big problems for organizations. It is first required to reach the quality to successfully govern IT and its processes. At this point, it is essential to have a quality maturity framework that organizations could use to follow a logical path in achieving quality. This thesis represents a study for determining the general quality requirements of a possible quality maturity framework for IT facilities in organizations. Many quality models, awards and frameworks will be discussed to determine those quality requirements and a possible leveling of the requirements will be also represented. Besides, a quality assessment survey will be performed in Turkish institutions regarding the quality requirements and the factors affecting them to determine the quality level of IT facilities in Turkish institutions.

The aim of this study is to work on the visual quality metrics that are widely accepted in literature, to evaluate them on different distortion types and to give a comparison of overall performances in terms of prediction accuracy, monotonicity, consistency and complexity. The algorithms behind the quality metrics in literature and parameters used for quality metric performance evaluations are studied. This thesis also includes the explanation of Human Visual System, classification of visual quality metrics and subjective quality assessment methods. Experimental results that show the correlation between objective scores and human perception are taken to compare the eight widely accepted visual quality metrics.

We consider a hydrothermal scheduling problem with a mid-term horizon(HTSPM) modeled as a large-scale multistage stochastic program with stochastic monthly inflows of water to each hydro generator. In the HTSPM we seek an operating policy to minimize the sum of present and expected future costs, which include thermal generation costs and load curtailment costs. In addition to various simple bounds, problem constraints involve water balance, demand satisfaction and power interchanges. Sampling-based decomposition algorithms (SBDAs) have been used in the literature to solve HTSPM. SBDAs can be used to approximately solve problem instances with many time stages and with inflows that exhibit interstage dependence. Such dependence requires care in computing valid cuts for the decomposition algorithm. In order to help maintain tractability, we employ an aggregate reservoir representation (ARR). In an ARR all the hydro generators inside a specific region are grouped to effectively form one hydro plant with reservoir storage and generation capacity proportional to the parameters of the hydro plants used to form that aggregate reservoir. The ARR has been used in the literature with energy balance constraints, rather than water balance constraints, coupled with time series forecasts of energy inflows. Instead, we prefer as a model primitive to have the time series model forecast water inflows. This, in turn, requires that we extend existing methods to compute valid cuts for the decomposition method under the resulting form of interstage dependence. We form a sample average approximation of the original problem and then solve this problem by these special-purpose algorithms. And, we assess the quality of the resulting policy for operating the system. In our analysis, we compute a confidence interval on the optimality gap of a policy generated by solving an approximation on a sampled scenario tree. We present computational results on test problems with 24 monthly stages in which the inter-stage dependency of hydro inflows is modeled using a dynamic linear model. We further develop a parallel implementation of an SBDA. We apply SBDA to solve the HTSPM for the Brazilian power system that has 150 hydro generators, 151 thermal generators and 4 regions that each characterize an aggregate reservoir. We create and solve four different HTSPM instances where we change the input parameters with respect to generation capacity, transmission capacity and load in order to analyze the difference in the total expected cost. / text