see document / Master of Science

MSCAGR (Agricultural Economics) / Department of Agricultural Economics / Agricultural cooperatives are important tools for enhancing the living standards of farmers in rural areas. It is therefore very clear that cooperatives are for the benefit of the farmers. However, the development of cooperatives in the study area is not at a desired level yet; hence, it is necessary to determine the farmers’ attitudes towards forming cooperatives. The research was carried out in Makhado Local Municipality, Vhembe District in Limpopo Province. Three irrigation schemes were selected for the study, which consist of a total of 215 smallholder farmers. However, only 152 smallholder irrigation farmers were used for the study. The mixed research design method was used for this study. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire. Interviews were also made using key informants (Extension Office). The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the data. Cross tabulations and the logistic regression were used to analyse the data. The study revealed that the socioeconomic characteristics smallholder irrigation farmers has an impact on their willingness to form cooperatives. The study also revealed that the attitudes of farmers have an impact on their willingness to form cooperatives. The study further revealed that the constraints such as trainings, hired service providers, costs of inputs, access to agricultural information, access to adequate land and access to markets have an impact on their willingness to form cooperatives. The study recommended that strategies can be implemented on how cooperatives can be formed and enhance their success. The study also shows that future research can be done in youth participation in agriculture and cooperatives, cooperatives partnering with agricultural companies and other organisations. / NRF

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / The current study is based on a multiple linear regression analysis with an objective to formulate an equation related to the productivity analysis of LHD equipment using independent variables such as the effective utilization of the equipment. To identify the independent variables, main productive factors, such as the actual capacity of the buckets, the transport cycles in the cleaning process, and the performance by means of curves, were analyzed. Comparisons of a Peruvian underground mine case study exhibited that the battery-powered equipment denoted similar production efficiencies to that exhibited by its diesel counterparts; however, the three-tier approach observed that the battery-powered equipment could achieve production efficiencies that are up to 13.8% more as compared to that achieved using its diesel counterparts because of increased effective utilization that can be attributed to long MTBF. The results of this study exhibit that LHDs under battery-powered storage are feasible for underground mining not only because of the fact that they do not emit any polluting gases, which helps to mitigate pollution, but also because of their good production performance that can be considered to be an important pillar in deep mining. Copyright 2019.

In this study I explore the feminist critique of Reinhold Niebuhr’s theology of sin, both to understand what the Niebuhrian and feminist understandings of sin talk about, and to see whether or not, or to what extent they are tenable in theory and in practice. Niebuhr’s feminist critics argue that Niebuhr’s claim of pride as the primary human sin fits only with men’s experience; women’s sin, they contend, is not self-inflation but self-loss. While I acknowledge the value of Niebuhr’s feminist critics’ interpretation of sin, this study provides a Niebuhrian response to the feminist critique. My main contention is that by overemphasizing women’s sin of passivity, some feminist theologians go too far to deny women’s capability of committing sin actively against others and the divine in both socio-moral and religio-theological aspect. The total rejection of the applicability of pride to women’s situation, I contend, undermines the profoundness of the feminist critique. I firstly give detailed expositions of Niebuhr’s theology of sin and the feminist critique of Niebuhr’s theology of sin respectively. The main discrepancies between the Niebuhrian and feminist understandings of sin will be laid out. Then I respond to some feminist criticisms by pointing out that the feminist misreading of Niebuhr on the topics of pride, the self, love, justice and the family is prevalent. I also question the two presuppositions of the feminist critique—the idea of women’s innocence and the spirit of secularity. These two presuppositions, I argue, contain in them some insoluble dilemmas that cause trouble for understanding women’s secular and religious experience. Lastly, I try to pull the insights of Niebuhr and his feminist critics together to form a more integrated view of women’s sin

archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Yuntong Bai

En ökad transportkommunikation i form av tågstation har visat sig vara en prispåverkande faktor vid bostads- och fastighetsvärdering runt om i hela världen. Denna uppsats syfte är att undersöka hur tillförseln av tågstationen i Marieholm påverkat bostadspriserna. Studien har avgränsats till byn Marieholm som är lokaliserad i utkanten av Eslövs kommun. Mer detaljerat syftar studien till att undersöka hur prisutvecklingen i två olika geografiska områden inom byn påverkats av den ökade transportmöjligheter. Studien är gjord genom analys av kvantitativ data där olika förklarande variabler behandlats genom en hedonisk prismodell. Teorin är baserad på Bid-rent teorin, agglomerationsfördelar samt betalningsvilja. Teorin har kompletterats av olika vetenskapliga studier som tidigare gjorts inom området och sammanfattats i tidigare forskning.I studiens resultat redogörs för en signifikant prisökning efter tillförseln av tågstation inom de båda geografiska områdena. Resultatet visade däremot på en högre ökning av bostadspriserna i den yttre ringen i jämförelse med den inre ringen i Marieholm. Slutsatsen förtydligar att tågstationens tillförseln har inneburit en generell positivt prisutveckling i Marieholm som inte endast beror på tillkomsten av en ny tågstation utan flera olika faktorer. / Increased transport communication in the form of a train station has proven to be a price-influencing factor in housing and property valuation around the world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the supply of the train station in Marieholm has affected housing prices. The study has been limited to the village of Marieholm, which is located on the outskirts of Eslöv municipality.In more detail, the study aims to investigate how price developments in two different geographical areas within the village were affected by the increased transport opportunities. The study was made by analyzing quantitative data where various explanatory variables were processed by a hedonic price model. The theory is based on Bid-rent theory, agglomeration advantages and willingness to pay. The theory has been supplemented by various scientific studies that have previously been done in the field and summarized in previous research.The results of the study report a significant price increase after the supply of train stations in the two geographical areas. The conclusion clarifies that the train station's supply has meant a generally positive price development in Marieholm which is not only due to the creation of a new train station but several different factors.

Programvara skapas för att lösa ett visst definierat problem. I denna process sker vanligtvis inkrementella steg mot den färdiga produkten. När programvara har skrivits eller ändrats måste man verifiera att programvaran fortfarande är funktionell och beter som förväntat. Denna verifiering görs vanligtvis genom regressions testning. Allt eftersom antalet tester som körs i en regressions- testsvit ökar, desto längre tid tar det att exekvera. Eventuellt oönskad lång tid för utvecklarna av programvaran. Inte alla regressionstester interagerar med den nya eller ändrade programvaran och därför är det således mindre nyttofulla ur ett testperspektiv. Om det är möjligt att veta hur man ordnar regressionstestens ordning så att testen som interagerar med den nya programvaran kommer först i testpaketet, så kan den förväntade tiden till återkoppling till utvecklaren att något test falerar sänkas. Denna tidsminskning medför ett jämnare arbetsflöde för utvecklaren. Denna uppsats undersöker en metod för att förutsäga vilka tester som ska köras först givet de ändringar som gjorts i programvaran. Den bakomliggande ideen till metoden är att använda historiska testdata och ändringar som gjorts i programvara för att beräkna en korrelation mellan test och programvara. Denna idé testas i ett hypotesters för att avgöra om det har någon prediktiv kraft. Detta val av metod görs eftersom det är icke-påträngande och kräver ingen instrumentering av programvaran utan endast kunskap om historiska testdata. Eventuella alternativa metoder är begränsade till vilken typ av data som finns och bestäms genom datautforskning. Metoder för mätning av prestanda och kvalitet bestäms genom en kombination av en litteraturundersökning och intressenternas önskemål. Resultatet indikerar att detta är en genomförbar metod. / Software is created to solve some defined problem. In this process incremental steps are usually taken towards the complete product. Once a piece of software has been written or changed, it has to be verified that the software is still functional and performs as expected. This verification is usually done through regression testing. As the number of tests to run in a regression test suite increase, the longer time it takes to execute. Possibly undesirable long time for the developers of the software. Not all regression tests interact with the new or changed piece of software and are thus less useful from a testing perspective. If it is possible to know how to arrange the order of regression tests so that the tests interacting with the new software come first in the test suite, then the expected time until feedback to the developer that something is broken can be reduced. This reduction in time makes for a smoother work flow for the developer. This thesis investigates a method for predicting which tests to run first given the changes made to the software. The underlying idea of the method is to use historical test data and changes made to software in order to compute a correlation between tests and software. This idea is tested in a hypothesis test to determine if it has any predictive power. This choice of method is made as it is non-intrusive and does not requiring any instrumentation of the software but only knowledge of the historical test data. Possible alternative methods are limited to what kind of data there exists and determined through data exploration. Methods for measuring performance and quality is determined through a combination of a literature survey and the desires of the stakeholder. The result indicates that this is a feasible method.

Includes bibliography. / The objective of this thesis is to review existing methods for estimating missing values in rainfall records and to propose a number of new procedures. Two classes of methods are considered. The first is based on the theory of variable selection in regression. Here the emphasis is on finding efficient methods to identify the set of control stations which are likely to yield the best regression estimates of the missing values in the target station. The second class of methods is based on the EM algorithm, proposed by Dempster, Laird and Rubin (1977). The emphasis here is to estimate the missing values directly without first making a detailed selection of control stations. All "relevant" stations are included. This method has not previously been applied in the context of estimating missing rainfall values.

This study proposes a performance comparison between machine learning regression algorithms and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The regression algorithms used in this study are Multiple linear, Least Absolute Selection Operator (Lasso), Ridge, Random Forest. Moreover, this study attempts to analyse the correlation between variables to determine the most important factors that affect house prices in Malmö, Sweden. There are two datasets used in this study which called public and local. They contain house prices from Ames, Iowa, United States and Malmö, Sweden, respectively.The accuracy of the prediction is evaluated by checking the root square and root mean square error scores of the training model. The test is performed after applying the required pre-processing methods and splitting the data into two parts. However, one part will be used in the training and the other in the test phase. We have also presented a binning strategy that improved the accuracy of the models.This thesis attempts to show that Lasso gives the best score among other algorithms when using the public dataset in training. The correlation graphs show the variables' level of dependency. In addition, the empirical results show that crime, deposit, lending, and repo rates influence the house prices negatively. Where inflation, year, and unemployment rate impact the house prices positively.

This thesis presented a useful tool in regression. Nonparametric linear regression techniques were described in the general context of regression. A comparison of two of these techniques, kernel regression and iterative regression, showed various aspects of nonparametric linear regressors.